Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'The Moral Foundations Theory'
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Burgoon, Jacob N. "The Moral Foundations of Teaching: Measuring Teachers' Implicit Moral Beliefs." University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1544787174462244.
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Wilson-Hart, Jessica H. "Culture Wars: Explaining Congressional Partisanship and Organizational Dysfunction Through Moral Foundations Theory." ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/2244.
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The focus of this study was the organizational working environment and existing partisanship evident in the United States Congress. There has been a reduction in the number of laws passed over the last 30 years from a high of over 1,000 to a low of around 120, with a period of complete government shutdown in 2013. This qualitative research utilized qualitative content analysis to discover the nature of partisan conflict as demonstrated by 6 members of Congress. The conceptual framework for this study was moral foundations theory. Different moral principles held by Democrats and Republicans were studied as a possible explanation for the inability of one end of the political spectrum to identify with, work with, and comprehend the belief systems of the other. Archival video data for each participant was viewed on C-Span and related transcripts were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Emerging themes were then inductively coded in order to understand the nature of the partisan conflict in Congress. Results demonstrate that Republicans and Democrats rely on different sets of moral foundations and that there is limited crossover between those who occupy the extreme ends of the ideological continuum. This lack of crossover essentially leads members with differing ideology and moral foundations to not comprehend the moral message of their opponents. With this knowledge, political strategists can help to develop communication and political approaches that take into consideration the moral foundations of ideological opponents. Social change implications include improved understanding of the ideological stance of members of the opposing party and improved working relationships in Congress, resulting in an organizational working environment that is less conflicted.
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Sinclair, Neil Stuart. "Propositional clothing and moral content : the foundations of expressivism as a meta-ethical theory." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.613844.
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Blahunka, Natalie Jane. "The Impact of Intentions and Omissions On Moral Judgments Across Domains." Thesis, Boston College, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:102257.
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Thesis advisor: Liane YoungThesis advisor: James Dungan
Moral psychologists disagree over whether descriptively different moral violations represent distinct cognitive domains or are in fact unified by common cognitive mechanisms. The Moral Foundations Theory (MFT; Haidt, 2007) offers five different domains of moral transgressions: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. Both intentionality and omission bias (e.g. omissions such as letting someone die being judged less harshly than actions such as killing someone) have been shown to impact moral judgments; however, it remains unclear how these rules modulate judgments across moral transgressions of various types. Here, we investigate the role of intentionality and omission bias across different moral violations to determine if the divide between moral domains represent true cognitive, (as opposed to descriptive), differences. We utilized a 2 x 2 x 5 design to create stories across the 5 domains posited by MFT that were intentional/accidental cases of actions/omissions. Importantly, this study also looks at four distinct moral judgments of wrongness, responsibility, blameworthiness, and punishment to assess the role of these rules across judgments. We found that intent and action play different roles across judgments, particularly when comparing wrongness and punishment. Intent seems to matter more for wrongness, whereas action matters more for punishment. Further, these rules also differ across domains. We found that intent matters more for the individualizing foundations of harm and fairness (versus the binding foundations of ingroup, authority, and purity) in judgments of wrongness and punishment. The difference between action and omission is also more important for the individualizing foundations for punishment. These data suggest intentionality and omission bias manifest themselves uniquely across moral judgments and domains and provide evidence that there are meaningful differences between domains
Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2014
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: College Honors Program
Discipline: Psychology Honors Program
Discipline: Psychology
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Araujo, Marcelo de. "Scepticism, freedom and autonomy : a study of the moral foundations of Descartes' theory of knowledge /." Berlin : W. de Gruyter, 2003. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb39088570r.
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Malone, Christopher David. "The foundations of international political virtue." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0f14f2a6-0d49-4c8d-8ebb-cb5af2cc444d.
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This thesis provides the theoretical groundwork for a 'virtue ethical' account of international political conduct. The project begins by investigating the distinct patterns of normative theorising within international scholarship, noting not only that moral philosophical foundations are unpronounced and interchangeable, but that even in this diminished capacity the influence of virtue ethical thought is limited and fragmentary relative to its competitors. Redressing this underrepresentation is thus dually motivated: developing a fresh perspective on important global issues, whilst also subjecting the theory to an atypical angle of scrutiny. Adapting virtue ethics to the international realm requires, most essentially, that we settle the level at which its concepts should be applied. Can the theory’s central focus on character be reconciled with the collective nature of global political interaction? Can we accurately ascribe virtues and vices to governments and states? These questions of group agency form the heart of thesis investigation. Beginning from abstract foundations, the possible justification for such ascriptions is sought in competing theories of joint action and attitude. The 'individualist' accounts of Searle and Bratman are ultimately rejected in favour of Gilbert's non-reductive 'plural subject' theory, and - presenting group-level accounts of intention, motivation, practical wisdom, emotion and disposition around her concept of 'joint commitment' - a general model of collective character is constructed. Allied to additional requirements of moral responsibility, this framework is then used to assess the virtue-capability of actual political bodies, considering the decision-making hierarchy of the United Kingdom as a case study for the modern state. Tracing the route of policy authorisation across cabinet, government and parliament, a sophisticated yet ultimately impermanent picture of group-virtue-ethical agency is established, in tension with the notion of enduring state liability. By shifting focus to the national level, it is argued that this fluctuating footprint of agency can nevertheless be unified, modifying Gilbert’s notion of a 'population joint commitment' to tie institutional virtue and vice to a persisting state identity. This provides a template for international character evaluation.
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Rampy, Nolan. "Intuitions or Informational Assumptions? An Investigation of the Psychological Factors Behind Moral Judgments." ScholarWorks @ UVM, 2015. http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/446.
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There is an ongoing debate among psychologists regarding the psychological factors underlying moral judgments. Rationalists argue that informational assumptions (i.e. ideological beliefs about how the world works) play a causal role in shaping moral judgments whereas intuitionists argue that informational assumptions are post hoc justifications for judgments made automatically by innate intuitions. In order to compare these two perspectives, the author conducted two studies in which informational assumptions related to ingroups and outgroups varied across conditions. In Study 1, political conservatives and liberals completed the moral relevance questionnaire while imagining they were in the US, Iran, or no specific country. Keeping in line with the predictions of the intuitionist perspective, the results showed that the judgments of conservatives and liberals did not significantly differ across conditions. Study 2 used a more in depth manipulation in which participants read a vignette about a government (US, Iran, or the fictional country of Kasbara) violating the rights of a minority group. As in Study 1, the results support the intuitionist perspective--the judgments of conservatives and liberals did not significantly differ across conditions. These findings play a small part in clarifying the role of informational assumptions in moral judgments.
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Neri, Marc P. "Loyalty and Fairness: A Study of the Influence of Moral Foundations on Auditors' Propensity to Subordinate their Judgment." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2016. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc955066/.
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Subordination of judgment is a fundamental threat to auditor objectivity. Subordination of judgment occurs when auditors agree with their superiors either in spite of or without forming their own independent judgments. Many audit procedures rely on independent, critical thinking at every level of the audit team; however, a number of studies suggest that auditors tend to agree with superiors even when a superior's views clearly run contrary to generally accepted accounting principles. While there is general agreement among scholars that subordination of judgment is "bad," very little attention has been given to moral biases that might influence an auditor's tendency to subordination of judgment, or to potential remedies that could mitigate an auditor's tendency to subordinate judgment.
Moral Foundations Theory suggests that individuals tend to make intuitive, normative evaluations of situations based upon a set of personal moral biases or preferences called "moral foundations." Two specific moral foundations could influence subordination of judgment in divergent ways. The moral foundation of loyalty-respect may make agreement with a superior's views seem more acceptable than would disagreement. Meanwhile, the moral foundation of fairness may make an auditor more sensitive to the observance of rules, resulting in less subordination of judgment when a superior's views run contrary to professional rules.
Social Identity Theory suggests that in-group favoritism may exacerbate subordination of judgment in general; however, strengthening an auditor's professional identity salience (PIS) could strengthen an auditor's objectivity. PIS is the temporary, heightened awareness of an auditor's identity as a professional and their role as guardian of professional rules. As a result, PIS may interact with an auditor's innate sense of fairness, resulting in less subordination of judgment than when professional identity is less salient.
Results supported the hypothesis that auditors tend to subordinate their judgment to that of a superior, but not that PIS mitigates the effect of subordination of judgment. Results also supported the hypotheses that the moral foundations of loyalty-respect and fairness influence the tendency of auditors to subordinate their judgment to that of a superior. Specifically, auditors with higher levels of loyalty-respect were more likely to agree with a superior who suggested an incorrect accounting treatment than auditors with lower levels of loyalty-respect. Whereas, auditors with higher levels of fairness were less likely to agree with a superior who suggested an incorrect treatment than were auditors with lower levels of fairness.
Therefore, this dissertation provides evidence that moral foundations bias professional judgment and decision making in auditing and calls for further research into the influence of moral heuristics.
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Hurst, Kristin Frances. "Identity, Intergroup Relationships, and Environmental Conflict." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/89333.
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This dissertation explores strategies for addressing identity-related barriers to environmental problem-solving through the lens of two social-psychological theories: self-affirmation theory and moral foundations theory. Through one theoretical review, two online experiments and one in-lab experiment I explore, integrate and test theoretically grounded strategies for reducing the defensive information processing that can exacerbate intergroup divisions in multi-stakeholder settings. The specific objectives of this dissertation are to 1) integrate self-affirmation theory and moral foundations theory into the current knowledge about collaborative conservation (Chapter 2), 2) evaluate ways of tailoring environmental communication to better reach socially and politically diverse audiences (Chapter 3), and 3) experimentally test the effectiveness of an approach, based on self-affirmation theory, to facilitate productive discussion of complex, value-laden issues in group settings. Before presenting the results of this work, I provide a broad overview of the problem of group-based divisions in environmental conflict and the theoretical underpinnings of the dissertation (Chapter 1). Finally, I summarize the results and discuss the broader implications of the research (Chapter 5). The results of this research offer initial insights into how tools grounded in these theories can most effectively be applied to help alleviate identity-based barriers to environmental problem-solving.Doctor of Philosophy
This dissertation explores strategies for addressing identity-related barriers to environmental problem-solving through the lens of two social-psychological theories: self-affirmation theory and moral foundations theory. Through one theoretical review, two online experiments and one in-lab experiment I explore, integrate and test theoretically grounded strategies for reducing the defensive information processing that can exacerbate intergroup divisions in multi-stakeholder settings. The specific objectives of this dissertation are to 1) integrate self-affirmation theory and moral foundations theory into the current knowledge about collaborative conservation (Chapter 2), 2) evaluate ways of tailoring environmental communication to better reach socially and politically diverse audiences (Chapter 3), and 3) experimentally test the effectiveness of an approach, based on self-affirmation theory, to facilitate productive discussion of complex, value-laden issues in group settings. Before presenting the results of this work, I provide a broad overview of the problem of group-based divisions in environmental conflict and the theoretical underpinnings of the dissertation (Chapter 1). Finally, I summarize the results and discuss the broader implications of the research (Chapter 5). The results of this research offer initial insights into how tools grounded in these theories can most effectively be applied to help alleviate identity-based barriers to environmental problem-solving.
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Courteau, Solange. "Explorer la moralité canadienne par le biais des plaintes concernant le contenu radio-télédiffusé." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/39380.
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Cette recherche visait à mieux comprendre les liens la morale personnelle, l’identité sociale au Canada et les médias. Pour ce faire, une analyse quantitative s’appuyant sur trois échantillons de données a été effectuée, et ce, à la lumière de la théorie des fondements moraux (TFM) (Haidt & Joseph, 2008) et de la théorie de l’identité sociale (Tajfel, 1981). Les échantillons sont les suivants : a) les mots clés assignés aux plaintes déposées au Conseil canadien des normes de la radiotélévision (CCNR); b) l’expression des fondements moraux des textes des plaintes délibérées par le CCNR et c) les données des participants canadiens de YourMorals.org, une recherche toujours en cours de Ditto, Graham, Haidt et coll. Les analyses de données ont permis de déterminer si le contenu médiatique stimule l’expression de matrices morales particulières, en fonction de la région d’origine, du genre et de la langue des plaignants. Les résultats suggèrent qu’il existerait des distinctions morales selon le genre, la langue, les régions d'origine des participants et les stimuli vécus. La présente étude est la première à mettre à l’épreuve la théorie des fondements moraux quant au jugement moral face à un contenu médiatique. Ce faisant, elle jette un éclairage nouveau sur cette même théorie en l’appliquant au contexte canadien et éclairant les liens entre la moralité et les identités canadiennes.
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Baghdassarian, Anoush. "Negotiating Human Rights Abuses through the Moral Foundations Theory: An Attempt to Understand the Moral Motivations behind the Male Guardianship System in Saudi Arabia, Female Genital Modification, and Child Marriage." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1473.
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The idea that there are universal human rights that can, and should, be enforced has been an increasingly wide-spread and popular belief, as well as a controversial one. Concerns of cultural relativism contrasted with stances of universalism spark an impassioned debate that permeates the dialogue of human rights today in all spheres: social, academic, and even those professional spheres that are tasked with creating and enforcing the laws regarding these issues. What does psychology have to say about this? After all, if it is a universal phenomenon, it must span across time, culture, and difference, and there must be trends in our human nature or similarities in our psychology that allow us to claim universality. One psychological theory, the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) can help shed light on this issue. MFT holds that universally, as human beings, we share five grounds of moral foundations on which we make our judgments and take action: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Authority/Submissiveness, Sanctity/Degradation, and Loyalty/Betrayal. While we are all born with the capability to act and reason on these, our cultures shape us to emphasize different foundations and it is in that shift that conflict arises. What one group sees as right, and based in moral justification, another sees as wrong and as a violation of human rights. This paper attempts to use MFT to understand the moral foundations underlying three case studies of practices internationally seen as human rights abuses, female genital modification, child marriage, and male guardianship in Saudi Arabia, and provides suggestions for methods of effective intervention based in MFT.
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Gabhart, Elizabeth Anne. "Religiousness and Spirituality: How Are They Related to Moral Orientations?" Thesis, University of North Texas, 2017. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1011767/.
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This dissertation examines correlations between religiousness and spirituality, to moral orientations using moral foundations theory as a framework. Using the 2012 Measuring Morality dataset, which provides a representative sample of the population of the United States, I create linear regressions which test associations between religiousness, spirituality, and each of the five moral foundations ((harm/care, fairness, in-group loyalty, respect for authority, and purity). I find that religiousness is negatively associated with concern for harm, and positively associated with respect for authority, a finding which implies that the moral behavior of religious people is rooted in respect for authority more than in any other moral concern. Spirituality is positively associated with concern for fairness. The implications of all findings are discussed, as well as limitations and recommendations for future research.
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Goldstein, Daniel M. (Daniel Michael). "Medicine as practical wisdom : an old foundation for a new way of thinking in biomedical ethics." Thesis, McGill University, 1989. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=22372.
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This inquiry suggests a new epistemological foundation for understanding and discernment in biomedical ethics. This foundation, based on Aristotle's phronesis or practical wisdom, contains elements of the lived human experience which are seen as essential aspects of ethical, as well as medical, deliberation. The Aristotelian intellectual virtues of theoria and phronesis, used as "ideal types" of rationality, provide epistemological prejudices that structure two distinct ways of thinking. With this distinction, an alternative to certain dominant trends within biomedical ethics arises as phronesis provides more human centered prejudices for understanding. In conclusion, we shall see, using the doctrine of informed consent, that a phronetic rationality allows different, more humane meanings to come into being. Phronesis, it will be argued, provides a mode of rationality which promotes compassion and engagement in both ethics and medicine and consequently, is the more appropriate way of thinking in these important human practices.
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Tognazzini, Neal Abram. "The conceptual foundations of moral resposability." Diss., UC access only, 2009. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1871875181&sid=1&Fmt=7&clientId=48051&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009.Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-201). Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.
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Kovarda, V., A. Kireeva, and A. Aldoshkina. "On the moral foundations of sustainable development." Thesis, Sumy State University, 2013. http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/49123.
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Main principles of sustainable development must become everyone’s moral code. In view of sustainable development concept and in order to implement it, it is necessary to prepare population in order to avoid countering the required changes. The main principles of sustainable development concept are social attitude, resource base protection and environment protection to secure the future for every country and the entire planet. It requires prepared society with strict moral standards.
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O'Hara, Neil Martin. "Basic moral certainty and the foundations of morality." Thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2299/17923.
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I aim to show in this thesis that human beings are morally concerned to the core; that a concern for moral goodness is a necessary part of our humanity. Central to my account of the foundations of morality is what I call 'primary recognition', which I argue is the source of our moral thinking. By primary recognition, I mean our basic apprehension of other human beings as objects of some moral concern. I take this to be a 'basic moral certainty', in accord with the notion recently introduced by Nigel Pleasants in the debate on moral foundations, which he drew from the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein on the notion of basic empirical certainty, found in On Certainty (1969). Building on Pleasants' notion of 'basic moral certainty' I bring to bear Danièle Moyal-Sharrock's distinction between universal and local forms of basic certainty in an effort to make sense of the co-existence of universal moral beliefs and local, often conflicting, moral beliefs. I offer and defend two examples of universal basic moral certainties: 'At least some killings are wrong' and 'Some wrongs are more serious, more wrong, than others', which I take to be necessarily indubitable for any moral agent. I then examine examples of local moral certainties: the wrongness of pig sacrifice in ancient Judaism, the goodness of hospitality among the modern Pashtun, and the wrongness of cannibalism for the ancient Greeks. These examinations lead me to conclude that basic moral certainties come in both local and universal varieties in just the same way as basic empirical certainties, and that holding certain local moral beliefs is definitional for membership in certain epistemic communities. I go on to consider some challenges to the view that morality has its foundations in basic moral certainty, in particular that made by G.E.M Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre that modern moral thought lacks any foundations. I reply by reiterating the nonrational nature of the foundations of morality, modern or otherwise. I conclude the thesis by outlining some of the outcomes of this account of moral certainty for contemporary moral philosophy.
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Dias, Rodrigo da Silva. "Political views, morality, and attitudes toward marijuana legalization." reponame:Repositório Institucional do FGV, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10438/24098.
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In this paper, we examine why attitudes toward marijuana legalization are split along ideological lines. In a survey, we found that conservatives were more likely to oppose this policy partly because of their greater reliance on the authority and purity foundations of morality. Curiously, concerns about harm were found to play no role in determining attitudes toward marijuana legalization, even though those who were against this policy frequently explained their views with harm-related accounts. In an experiment, we found that opponents of legalization were more likely to adopt a more favorable view towards it when exposed to arguments and sources that were consistent with the authority and purity dimensions of morality. Precisely, subjects who initially opposed legalization were more likely to change their attitudes when exposed to arguments that were based on the purity (vs. harm) foundation of morality, and when they were led to believe that these arguments were given by religious (vs. business) leaders.
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Kestin, Gregory Michael. "Light-Shell Theory Foundations." Thesis, Harvard University, 2014. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11596.
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We study the motivation and groundwork for the construction of a Light-Shell Effective Theory, an effective field theory for describing the matter emerging from high-energy collisions and the accompanying radiation. We begin in chapter 2 with a simple electrodynamics calculation to motivate the picture of the ``light-shell," in which all electric and magnetic fields lie on a spherical shell that moves outward at the speed of light. The result turns out to do more than motivate, as it also hints at an important feature of the theory, namely the gauge in which we subsequently choose to do calculations, called Light-Shell Gauge.Physics
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Long, Graham Mark. "Relativism and the foundations of liberalism." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.391402.
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Morris, Ronald. "Philosophical foundations of moral values in sex education." Thesis, McGill University, 1985. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63345.
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Owen, Roderic Lewis. "Liberal education and moral development: an integrated model of moral education." W&M ScholarWorks, 1985. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539618618.
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Two central questions are raised: at a college level, what should be our educational goals and methods in the realm of moral development? and, what curricular or instructional model is most logically consistent and ethically acceptable with the mission and philosophy of liberal education? The major purpose of this study is to answer these questions and develop one reasonable, clearly defined model of college-level moral education.;As a normative inquiry into the goals of moral education, this philosophical study rests on the assumption that statements of moral value can be rationally understood and taught and is guided by an awareness of the major findings in social scientific research on moral development and education and practical use of the conceptual analysis of educational terminology.;In order to answer the central questions, it is argued that the ideal of liberal education (its inherent logical and ethical criteria as well as a developed set of explicit curricular goals) can help determine legitimate curricular goals and methods that are focused on moral development. An extended definition of liberal education is developed through reference to widely accepted historical statements and examination of contemporary principles and goals.;Five contemporary models of undergraduate moral education are next identified and described in detail: values clarification, wholistic, humanities, normative ethics, and cognitive-developmental. The specific criteria for liberal education are then critically applied, evaluating the respective strengths and weaknesses of each model. It is argued that the normative ethics and cognitive-developmental models are most closely connected with the historical aims and contemporary goals of liberal education.;The study concludes with a detailed analysis of the two selected models. Reasons for their integration are developed, pedagogical methods and resources which emerge from their combination are outlined, and a summary of this approach to selecting and developing an acceptable model of college-level moral education is offered. In closing, it is stated that college students can legitimately be taught to reflect on morality, to be committed to the rational analysis and selection of moral values and lifestyles, and to act in accordance with their convictions.
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Himmelreich, Johannes. "Agency as difference-making : causal foundations of moral responsibility." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2015. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3277/.
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We are responsible for some things but not for others. In this thesis, I investigate what it takes for an entity to be responsible for something. This question has two components: agents and actions. I argue for a permissive view about agents. Entities such as groups or artificially intelligent systems may be agents in the sense required for responsibility. With respect to actions, I argue for a causal view. The relation in virtue of which agents are responsible for actions is a causal one. I claim that responsibility requires causation and I develop a causal account of agency. This account is particularly apt for addressing the relationship between agency and moral responsibility and sheds light on the causal foundations of moral responsibility.
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Cheng, E. L. G. "Higher-dimensional category theory : opetopic foundations." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.597569.
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The problem of defining a weak n-category has been approached in various different ways, but so far the relationship between these approaches has not been fully understood. The subject of this thesis is the 'opetopic' theory of n-categories, embracing a group of definitions based on the theory of 'opetopes'. This approach was first proposed by Baez and Dolan, and further approaches to the theory have been proposed by Hermida, Makkai and Power, and Leinster. The opetopic definition of n-category has two stages. First, the language for describing k-cells is set up; this, in the language of Baez and Dolan, is the theory of opetopes. Then, a concept of universality is introduced, to deal with composition and coherence. We first exhibit an equivalence between the three theories of opetopes as far as they have been proposed. We then give an explicit description of the category Opetope of opetopes. We also give an alternative presentation of the construction of opetopes using the 'allowable graphs' of Kelly and MacLane. The underlying data for an opetopic n-category is given by an opetopic set. The category of opetopic sets is described explicitly by Baez and Dolan; we prove that this category is in fact equivalent to the category of presheaves on Opetope. We then turn our attention to the fully definition of (weak) n-categories. We define for each n a category Opic-n-Cat of opetopic n-categories and 'lax n-functors'. We then examine low-dimensional cases, and exhibit an equivalence between the opetopic and classical theories for the cases n £ 2, giving in particular an equivalence between the opetopic and classical approaches to bicategories.
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Maibom, Heidi Lene. "Philosophical foundations of the Theory Theory of folk psychology." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.343900.
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Alqahtani, Azizah. "The effect of psychological factors on morality : the role of culture and moral foundations." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/11815.
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The main aim of this PhD research was to explore the cultural differences in moral judgment, moral behaviour, moral identity, and cultural values between Saudi Arabia and United Kingdom. Furthermore, I was interested in the psychological factors affecting morality in those two cultures. The first study aimed to achieve the following objectives: to understand people’s moral judgment in Saudi Arabia and the UK, to investigate whether and how personality traits and cultural values affect moral judgment in five moral foundations (harm avoidance, justice, ingroup, authority, purity), and to investigate whether personality traits and cultural values are related differently or similarly across Saudi and UK cultures. The findings of the study revealed that Saudi and British participants differed with regard to their foundation-specific moral judgments. Saudi participants were more likely to endorse moral foundations in the domains of intergroup relations, authority, and purity. However, there were no cross-cultural differences in the domains of harm avoidance and justice. Moreover, the results showed that the effect of personality traits and cultural values on morality varied. Harm and fairness foundations were predicted by personality traits while ingroup, authority, purity foundations were predicted by values. The second study investigated whether foundation-related moral behaviour was affected by moral judgment and people’s moral identity in a cross-cultural context comparing adults from the UK and Saudi Arabia. Findings of this study resulted in no cross-cultural differences between the two samples concerning moral judgment in the care and justice foundations. Furthermore, no cultural differences were found between the two samples concerning moral behaviour in the five foundations. In addition, moral identity mediated the relationship between moral judgment and allocations in the dictator game. The third study investigated the relationship between (dis-) honest behaviour, moral judgment and moral identity in two different cultures, namely Saudi Arabia and the UK. It has been found that there are no statistically significant differences in honest behaviour between Saudi Arabia and the UK. Furthermore, deception was not predicted or correlated significantly with any of the five foundation-specific moral judgments across both cultural samples. However, culture moderated the relationship between deception and moral judgment in harm and authority moral foundations. Additionally, moral sensitivity did not mediate the relationship between moral judgments and dishonesty. The forth study explored the link between moral foundation violations (harm, justice, ingroup, authority, and purity) and anger, disgust, sadness, apathy, guilt, contempt, shame, resentment, and embarrassment emotions. Findings showed that the violations of harm, and justice foundations triggered anger and Violations of purity foundation triggered disgust. The results show no cultural differences in the assignments of the violations made by both samples. Saudi and UK participants’ classifications were in agreement with the original classifications of the 40 violations by Graham et al. (2009). However, we found cross-cultural differences in the relationship between emotions and moral foundation violations.
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Graham, Danielle N. "Athletic Identity and Moral Development: An Examination of NCAA Division I Athletes and Their Moral Foundations." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright149564552364006.
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Daigneault, Pierre. "Sartre's early moral theory." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/MQ54271.pdf.
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Hatfield, Joseph. "Virtue, purpose, and war : secular moral foundations for reasoning about warfare." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709219.
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Hankins, Keith. "Embracing Moral Luck: Accidents, Apologies, and the Foundations of Social Cooperation." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/560948.
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The norms that mediate our responses to accidents play a critical role in facilitating social cooperation. My dissertation explores these norms with an eye towards what they can tell us about the nature of moral responsibility. Drawing on Adam Smith's brief, but important discussion of moral luck, I argue that our responses to accidents reveal the extent to which the obligations we incur and the moral appraisals we make of one another are often appropriately influenced by fortune. In particular, I show how making sense of these responses requires us to embrace the idea that we can sometimes be morally responsible for things without being culpable, and I argue that doing so need not do violence to our moral intuitions.
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Ujewe, Samuel Jonathan. "Just health care in Nigeria : the foundations for an African ethical framework." Thesis, University of Central Lancashire, 2016. http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/16731/.
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Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa share at least three things: cultural heritage, a high burden of disease and a low financial commitment to health care. This thesis asks questions of justice about health care systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular Nigeria. The questions are about access to the available health resources and services within African health care systems. While the sub-region as a whole cannot boast of good health care, certain population groups are relatively more disadvantaged. This suggests either or both of two problems: a) that access to basic health care is not proportionate to the populations’ needs; and/or b) that the distribution of the available health care resources favour some over others. Attempts to improve population health have focused on empirical, economic or social strategies. These tend to overlook the ethical dynamics surrounding access to and the distribution of health care. In view of this moral challenge, Norman Daniels has proposed the ethical framework of Accountability for Reasonableness, which can provide basic guidelines for just health care reforms in Africa. While his approach has been effective in the United States, the theoretical basis has fundamental value differentials from African ideals of justice. Starting from Daniels’ Just Health – Meeting Health Needs Fairly, this PhD study develops an African ethical framework that could inform reforms in African health care systems. Specifically, it establishes four key attributes of the African moral outlook, and three principles of African justice. It further abstracts an African method of ethical analysis: process equilibrium. Against this background, the thesis develops a harmonised framework of just health care. Daniels’ principles are matched with African principles to create a Just Health Theory, which is adapted to the Sub-Saharan Africa context. The resulting African principles are mapped onto the health care sector and finally blended into the Harmonised Framework of Just Health Care. By combining the insights from Daniels with African values and approaches, it is possible that just health care will be attained in Nigeria and beyond.
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Lockard, Matthew Korthase. "Foundations of epistemic normativity." Diss., Restricted to subscribing institutions, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1610049891&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=1564&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Minto, William Richmond. "Foundations for a realist theory of causality." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ28507.pdf.
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Dimmock, Mark. "In defence of moral error theory and moral abolitionism." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2016. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31237/.
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In this thesis I present a challenge to anyone who continues to engage in moral thinking – that is to say, I present a challenge to most people currently alive. In the first three chapters, I defend the idea that no non-negative moral proposition is ever true ('Moral Error Theory'). On the back of this defence, I then provide arguments in support of the related - but not entailed – Moral Abolitionist account. According to this view, moral thought, moral talk and morally-coloured motivations should be abolished in favour of an entirely non-moral assessment of the world and the options that face us when we deliberate on questions regarding to ‘how to act’ or ‘how to live’.
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Star, Daniel. "Beyond moral particularism : moral principles in theory and practice." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.442913.
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Pagano, Dario. "Diritti naturali e Diritti Umani." Thesis, Paris 10, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015PA100036/document.
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Cette thèse a pour but de comprendre si les droits humains contemporains sont les équivalents des droits naturels affirmés à l’époque moderne. En un premier temps, les conceptions contemporaines sur la nature des droits humains sont étudiées, en particulier les conceptions qui reconstruisent le sens des droits de l’homme à partir des positions ontologiques. En un second temps, une reconstruction de cette comparaison est mise en évidence sous trois perspectives : l’idée des droits naturels, le concept des droits naturels et les théories des droits naturels. Enfin, une fois mis en évidence les aspects significatifs de ces catégories, on procède à leur comparaison, en soulignant les points de continuité entre droits humains et droits naturels et les différences qui séparent leur cheminThe aim of this work concerns the relation between human rights and natural rights, in order to understand if human rights are those natural rights affirmed in the modern age. First of all, we analyse the contemporary conceptions about human rights nature, especially those which find their meaning from ontological positions. Secondly, we reconstruct the term of this comparison from three perspectives : the idea of natural rights, the concept of natural rights, the theories of natural rights. At last, after the individuation of relevants aspects between both categories, we compare them, highlighting the common points and the differences that separate their path
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Bartl, Eduard. "Mathematical foundations of graded knowledge spaces." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2009.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, 2009.Includes bibliographical references.
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Wong, Ching Wa. "Psychoanalytic theory and moral naturalism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.413032.
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Uzan-Milofsky, Michele Marie. "David Gauthier's contractarian moral theory." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2006. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/1947/.
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Can we derive and internalise moral rules from pure rational agency. If such a project is possible then a contractarian moral theory is conceivable. Restricting the field of morality to social co-operation, David Gauthier is probably the preeminent 20th century champion of such a theory from his Morals by Agreement, published in 1986, to his most recent writings. The purpose of this thesis is present, analyse and argue against his project. The main argument developed is that a pre-conception of morality cripples his rational calculus and that moral rules cannot be internalised through rational calculus alone. In the first part of the thesis, I give full voice to Gauthier. His work from 1963 to 1986 is presented and interpreted. In particular, in the first chapter I describe how, from his Hobbesian background and his research on practical rationality, Gauthier was led to develop a contractarian moral theory. Chapter two is then fully dedicated to developing the core features of Morals by Agreement, providing an interpretation that highlights its main strengths and weaknesses. Gauthier's work has been extensively commented upon since 1986 and Gauthier actively participated in the debates generated by his writings. Although he stopped defending his Morals by Agreement from 1993, he remained faithful to the idea of a contractarian moral theory. In the second part of the thesis, I first review in chapter three the criticisms made of Morals by Agreement as well as Gauthier's responses to them. By 1993, he had abandoned several key points of his theory. However, inspired by his Hobbesian background (chapter six), and within the framework of McClennen's concept of resoluteness (chapter five), Gauthier renewed his attempt to derive co-operation from pure rational agency. Chapter seven is a discussion of this latest attempt.
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Cochrane, Andrew Iain Gordon. "Moral error theory and revisionism." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.438578.
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Lind, Marcia Susan. "Emotions and Hume's moral theory." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/14740.
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Lu, Houliang. "Xenophon's theory of moral education." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9868.
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Xenophon the Athenian, who is well known as a historian and a witness of Socratic philosophy but is usually excluded from the list of classical writers on education, actually developed his own systematic thought on moral education from a social and mainly political perspective in his extant works. His discourse on moral education presents for us the view of an unusual historical figure, an innovative thinker as well as a man of action, a mercenary general and a world citizen in his age; and is therefore different from that of contemporary pure philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle. Furthermore, as a prolific author respected in both the classical world and the early modern era, Xenophon’s doctrine on moral education greatly influences the later development of European cultural history. This thesis explores the background and content of Xenophon’s thought on moral education, as well as its application in his other literary works, which are not directly on the same topic but are indirectly influenced by it. Part 1 discusses the background which produces Xenophon’s thought on moral education. As a historian of his own age, Xenophon’s negative view of the world he lived in is fully expressed in his Hellenica; and his idea of social education organised by a competent political leader serves as a proposal to transform the disordered Greek world in his time. As a follower of Socrates, Xenophon adopts his teacher’s approach of focusing on the study of moral issues and leadership; and the need to make apology for Socrates helps to shape many heroes in Xenophon’s works into extremely pious men and beneficial moral teachers. Part 2 analyses the content of Xenophon’s thought on moral education. This idea is systematically explained in his Cyropaedia and advocated in a rhetorical and persuasive manner in his Hiero. By modern ethical standards, Xenophon’s moral education is supported by dark art of government and cannot always be justified; but this dark side is tolerable in Xenophon’s view as long as it ultimately serves for good purpose. In his Poroi and Oeconomicus, Xenophon makes a further development of his thought by confirming that the art of accumulating and using wealth is also an indispensable skill for organisers of social education. Part 3 presents the application of Xenophon’s theory of moral education in his epoch-making literary composition. His Agesilaus, which serves as a prototype for later biographies, depicts a historical figure living and acting according to the ethical principles which Xenophon sets for ideal political leaders; while his Oeconomicus, which influenced Hellenistic and Roman agricultural works greatly, attempts to bring the experience of public education into the domestic sphere. The analysis of these themes confirms that Xenophon actually established a theory of moral education, which is social, highly political but also philosophical, in his extant corpus. On the one hand, Xenophon’s theory is less profound than that of Plato or Aristotle and is sometimes superficial and occasionally self-contradictory; on the other hand, the theory is original, innovative and influential in the history of classical literature, and therefore deserves our respect and serious treatment.
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Turner, Jonathan. "Political theory as moral philosophy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2018. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9b47b083-30aa-411d-a100-29aee7c34a3b.
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I argue against the claim that normative political theory is 'autonomous' with respect to moral philosophy. I take the simple view that political theory is a form of moral philosophy, and is differentiated by pragmatic rather than theoretically significant criteria. I defend this view by criticizing arguments for the autonomy thesis. In the first three chapters I introduce and analyse the autonomy thesis and provide a framework for understanding the various claims that are made in the literature. In Chapters 4 to 8 I proceed to criticize a series of arguments for the autonomy thesis. In Chapter 4 I explain why Kant's division of morality into ethics and right is not as useful as it may seem to those who wish to defend the autonomy thesis, and argues that Arthur Ripstein gives no reason to think that political philosophy is autonomous that can be endorsed independently of commitment to a Kantian normative theory. In Chapter 5 I examine the political liberal argument for the autonomy thesis, concluding that even if a freestanding political conception of justice can be regarded as autonomous, it does not follow that political philosophy can also. Chapters 6 to 8 tackle various political realist arguments for the autonomy thesis. In Chapter 6 I argue that political theory is not required to deal with empirical facts in any way that distinguishes it from moral philosophy, and any argument for its autonomy that is based on a prior claim about the purpose of political theorizing would be question-begging. In Chapters 7 and 8 I provide various arguments against the idea that there is a distinctively political form of normativity, and diagnose some of the mistaken assumptions about morality that I take to lie at the heart of the realist case. In Chapter 9 I conclude.
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Orsi, Cosma Emilio. "The moral foundations of markets : from libertarianism to the economy of solidarity." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.415592.
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van, Luenen Anne Fleur. "Recognising Moral Foundations in Online Extremist Discourse : A Cross-Domain Classification Study." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för lingvistik och filologi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-426921.
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So far, studies seeking to recognise moral foundations in texts have been relatively successful (Araque et al., 2019; Lin et al., 2018; Mooijman et al., 2017; Rezapouret al., 2019). There are, however, two issues with these studies: Firstly, it is an extensive process to gather and annotate sufficient material for training. Secondly, models are only trained and tested within the same domain. It is yet unexplored how these models for moral foundation prediction perform when tested in other domains, but from their experience with annotation, Hoover et al. (2017) describe how moral sentiments on one topic (e.g. black lives matter) might be completely different from moral sentiments on another (e.g. presidential elections). This study attempts to explore to what extent models generalise to other domains. More specifically, we focus on training on Twitter data from non-extremist sources, and testing on data from an extremist (white nationalist) forum. We conducted two experiments. In our first experiment we test whether it is possible to do cross domain classification of moral foundations. Additionally, we compare the performance of a model using the Word2Vec embeddings used in previous studies to a model using the newer BERT embeddings. We find that although the performance drops significantly on the extremist out-domain test sets, out-domain classification is not impossible. Furthermore, we find that the BERT model generalises marginally better to the out-domain test set, than the Word2Vec model. In our second experiment we attempt to improve the generalisation to extremist test data by providing contextual knowledge. Although this does not improve the model, it does show the model’s robustness against noise. Finally we suggest an alternative approach for accounting for contextual knowledge.
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Davis, Gordon F. "Transcendental arguments and the foundations of ethical theory." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.431048.
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Galvão, Ernesto Fagundes. "Foundations od quantum theory and quantum information applications." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.249255.
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Wallace, David. "Issues in the foundations of relativistic quantum theory." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.270178.
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Fernandes, Marco Cezar Barbosa. "Geometric algebras and the foundations of quantum theory." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.283390.
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The difficulties associated with the quantization of the gravitational field suggests a modification of space-time is needed. For example at suffici~ly small length scales the geometry of space-time might better discussed in terms of a noncommutative algebra. In this thesis we discuss a particular example of a noncommutative algebra, namely the symplectic Schonberg algebra, which we treat as a geometric algebra. Thus our investigation has some features in common with recent work that explores how geometry can be formulated in terms of noncommutative structures. The symplectic Schonberg algebra is a geometric algebra associated with the covariant and the contravariant vectors of a general affine space. The "embedding" of this space in a noncommutative algebra leads us to a structure which we regard as a noncommutative affine geometry. The theory in question takes us naturally to stochastic elements without the usual ad-hoc assumptions concerning measurements in physical ensembles that are made in the usual interpretation of quantum mechanics. The probabilistic nature of space is obtained purely from the structure of this algebra. As a consequence, geometric objects like points, lines and etc acquire a kind of fuzzy character. This allowed us to construct the space of physical states within the algebra in terms of its minimum left-ideals as was proposed by Hiley and Frescura [1J. The elements of these ideals replace the ordinary point in the Cartesian geometry. The study of the main inner-automorphisms of the algebra gives rise to the representation of the symplectic group of linear classical canonical transformations. We show that this group acts on the minimum left-ideal of the algebra and in this case manifests itself as the metaplectic group, i.e the double covering of the symplectic group. Thus we are lead to the theory of symplectic spinors as minimum left-ideals in exactly the same way as the orthogonal spinors can be formulated in terms of minimum left-ideals in the Clifford algebra .. The theory of the automorphisms of the symplectic Schonberg algebra allows us to give a geometrical meaning to integral transforms such as: the Fourier transform, the real and complex Gauss Weierstrass transform, the Bargmann (3) transform and the Bilateral Laplace transform. We construct a technique for obtaining a realization of these algebraic transformations in terms of integral kernels. This gives immediately the Feynmann propagators of conventional non-relativistic quantum mechanics for Hamiltonians quadratic in momentum and position. This then links our approach to those used in quantum mechanics and optics. The link between the theory of this noncommutative geometric algebra and the theory of vector bundles is also discussed.
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Kim, Steven Hyung. "Mathematical foundations of manufacturing science : theory and implications." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/15283.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1985.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY.
Bibliography: leaves 161-167.
by Steven Hyung Kim.
Ph.D.
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Chang, Justin H. Chang. "The Killer: Moral Choice in Virtual Environments." The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1532035898806428.
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