Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1970, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2023, Philosophy (Arts and Sciences)

In the meta-ethical debates about moral knowledge, there are many theoretical positions to consider. If one is to have an account of moral knowledge, that will inevitably be affected by how one thinks about knowledge in general. I will be transferring a general theory of knowledge and epistemic justification to the more specific domain of ethics, through the lens of epistemic fallibilism. My goal, in applying this epistemic framework to moral discourse, is to outline how moral fallibilism (my theory) can provide a unique and attractive account of moral knowledge. I will accomplish the application of epistemology to ethical theory by implementing Stewart Cohen's account of fallibilism (with its central notion of “relevance”), and by highlighting the aim and position of moral fallibilism by contrasting it with Mackie's error theory. Finally, I will illustrate moral fallibilism by applying it to contemporary moral concerns; the debate about abortion, in particular. Ultimately, I propose a fresh theory of moral knowledge that emphasizes the varying degrees of justification for our ethical beliefs while defending, at the same time, a moderate account of moral objectivity.

Committee: Christoph Hanisch (Advisor) Subjects: Epistemology; Ethics; Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Philosophy, Applied

Global normative error theorists argue that there are no authoritative normative reasons of any kind. Thus, according to the error theory, the normative demands of law, prudence, morality, etc. are of no greater normative significance than the most absurd standards we can conceive of. Because the error theory is a radically revisionary view, theorists who accept it only do so because they maintain the view is supported by the best available arguments. In this dissertation, I argue that error theory entails that it is impossible that there are successful arguments for anything, thus defenses of error theory are in tension with the view, itself. My argument begins with the observation that it is natural to think a successful argument is one that gives us an authoritative normative reason to believe its conclusion. Error theory entails that there are no authoritative reasons to believe anything. What are arguments for error theory even supposed to accomplish? Error theorists may respond that their arguments are solely intended to get at the truth. I argue that this reply fails. One problem is that it cannot make sense of why in practice even error theorists still want evidence for the premises of sound arguments. Error theorists may try to capture the importance of evidence by appeal to our social norms or goals. I argue that this answer is indistinguishable from the view that our social practices or goals generate authoritative normative requirements. Thus, attempts to defend the coherence of arguing for error theory are either unacceptably revisionary or they are inconsistent with error theory. While this result is a problem for error theory, it seems consistent with highly relativistic accounts of normative authority. In the future, I plan to explore whether my core arguments can be extended to defend authoritative, universal scope normative requirements (e.g. of prudence and morality).

Committee: Michael Weber Dr (Advisor); Verner Bingman Dr (Other); Christian Coons Dr (Committee Member); Molly Gardner Dr (Committee Member); Sara Worley (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1967, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1967, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1968, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1968, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1967, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1967, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1967, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2020, Philosophy (Arts and Sciences)

In this thesis I reconstruct and evaluate John Mackie's Argument from Queerness presented in his 1977 book, Inventing Right and Wrong. Mackie argues that moral values are queer due to their objective prescriptivity and therefore that moral values do not exist. I examine how the concept of the objective prescriptivity of moral values functions in Mackie's argument by analyzing an exchange between David Brink and Richard Garner. Specifically, I consider two objections to the Argument from Queerness advanced by Brink. The first challenges the argument's reliance on motivational internalism. The second focuses on the supervenience of moral properties on physical properties. By contrast, Garner argues that queerness in Mackie's argument ought to be understood in terms of normative authority as opposed to motivational irresistibility and that once queerness is so understood, Mackie's argument survives Brink's critique. I argue that Garner provides an effective response to Brink's criticism.

Committee: Christoph Hanisch (Advisor) Subjects: Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1981, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Engineering

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2014, Mathematics

Error correcting codes is an area of mathematics that combines many theoretical concepts with a wide variety of applications. In this expository thesis, we will begin by introducing many of the fundamental ideas in classical error correcting codes. The goal of this is to introduce the reader to the field of coding theory and discuss a few of the wide range of classical codes that have been studied. The second section will discuss the recent findings in error correcting codes, namely their use in quantum error correcting codes. This section uses much more theoretical areas of math, when compared to the classical section, in the construction of quantum error correcting codes. Most of the research discussed in this section has been completed within the past six years. All of the research discoveries presented in this thesis have been previously known.

Committee: Matthew Kahle PhD (Advisor); David Sivakoff PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Mathematics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Electrical and Computer Engineering

The rapid growth in wireless communication systems has provided a flexibility of communication and content that has had a transformative impact to all aspects of society. However, the broadcast nature of the wireless medium makes these systems vulnerable to passive attacks in which the adversary attempts to eavesdrop on the transmitted messages, and to active attacks in which the adversary can intelligently manipulate legitimate transmissions, both of which can jeopardize a myriad of critical wireless services. Hence, it is imperative to design wireless networks with safeguards in place to ensure their resilience to attacks. To that end, this dissertation provides various perspectives in the domain of information theoretic secrecy and authentication, which provably guarantees security, regardless of the computational capabilities of the adversary. We strive to bridge the gap between the information theory of security and the practically implementable protocols within this paradigm. We first consider point to point secure communication over flat fading wireless channels under delay constraint. We extend the definition of outage capacity to account for the secrecy constraint and obtain sharp characterizations of the corresponding fundamental limits under different assumptions on the transmitter channel state information (CSI). The capacity achieving scheme relies on opportunistically exchanging private keys between the legitimate nodes. These keys are stored in a key buffer and used to secure delay sensitive data. We also characterize the optimal power control policies and analyze the effect of key buffer overflow on the overall outage probability. Next, we focus on investigating additional sources for generating secret key bits in mobile wireless networks. We propose an algorithm for secret key generation based on the observations of the relative locations between a pair of nodes. We test our algorithm in a vehicular setting based on observations made (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Can Emre Koksal (Advisor); Hesham El Gamal (Advisor); Ness Shroff (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2009, Industrial/Organizational Psychology (Arts and Sciences)

Applied psychologists have long recognized the importance of measurement as a key component of research quality, but the use of psychometrically sound measurement practices has not kept pace. Recent evidence has emerged to suggest that weak measurement practices can have serious implications for the accuracy of parametric statistics. Two simulation studies (Embretson, 1996; Kang & Waller, 2005) have identified that response score scaling and assessment appropriateness heavily influence the Type I error rate for interaction effects in moderated statistical models when simple raw scores are used to operationalize a latent construct. However, the use of item response theory (IRT) models to rescale the raw data into estimated theta scores was found to mitigate these effects. The purpose of this dissertation was to generalize these results to polytomous data that is commonly found in applied psychological research using a Monte Carlo simulation. Consistent with the previous studies, inflated Type I error rates for the interaction effect in a moderated multiple regression model were observed when raw scores were used to operationalize a latent construct. In the most extreme cases, this inflation approached 85%. Also consistent with previous studies, psychometric factors were found to have a greater impact on raw scores than on estimated theta scores, and assessment appropriateness was found to be the most influential factor on the empirical Type I error rate. Inconsistent with previous studies, an inflated Type I error rate was also observed under some conditions for the estimated theta scores suggesting that the graded response model (GRM) may not have provided a sufficiently equal-interval metric. Additionally, the expected interaction between assessment appropriateness and assessment fidelity was not found to be significant. Overall, these results suggest that the IRT-derived scores were more robust to spurious interactions than simple raw scores, but may still result (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Rodger W. Griffeth PhD (Committee Co-Chair); George Johanson EdD (Committee Co-Chair); Jeffrey Vancouver PhD (Committee Member); Paula Popovich PhD (Committee Member); Victor Heh PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Psychology/Industrial-Organizational

The overwhelming evidence in the literature favors mechanical judgment over holistic when making selection predictions. To date, no research has examined how the risk of error and the type of error in employee selection may impact attitudes toward holistic and mechanical judgment. Applying the principles of Error Management Theory (Haselton & Nettle, 2006), the goal of this research was to understand how the likelihood of specific types of selection errors (false positives versus false negatives) and the risk of these errors influence people's attitudes toward holistic and mechanical judgment. Error rate (10% versus 40%) and type of error were investigated experimentally. A sample of 323 working adults took part in an experiment where they assumed the role of head of Human Resources for a large organization. Results of a fully crossed between-subjects design indicated an effect of error rate, but no effect of type of error on Perceived Usefulness of the selection procedure. There were also no interaction effects of judgment approach (holistic versus mechanical) and error rate or type of error. With the exploratory variable Perceived Legality, there was no effect of error rate, but there was an effect of type of error. The selection procedure was perceived to be less legal when false negative error was emphasized, as opposed to when false positive error was emphasized. Implications of these findings and future directions are discussed.

Committee: Scott Highhouse PhD (Advisor); Milton Hakel PhD (Committee Member); Devin McAuley PhD (Committee Member); Amelia Carr PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Occupational Psychology; Organizational Behavior; Psychology