Sharif Digital Repository

Today, energy crises and the environmental pollution have become serious problems for the human being. To address these problems, extensive efforts have been made to replace fossil fuels with other clean energy resources such as fuel cells. In the meantime, polymer electrolyte fuel cells are very important as they are now commonly used in the field of transportation, and their importance become even more obvious as we consider the fact that the by-products from electricity production by such cells are simply water and heat. This research studies the efficiency of the polymer called “polysulfone” as an electrolyte fuel cell, which has the above named mechanical thermal and chemical... 

Hartry Field argues that meaning-besed approaches to explaining the apriority of certain propositions fail to succeed in their endeavour. He suggests that adoting what one cals a non-factualist view of justification itself removes the mystery of the apriority of such propositions, and sketches what such a view of justification involves. A priori justification is often thought mysterious or out of keeping with a naturalistic view of the world; strong forms of priori justification that involve empirical indefeasibility are often thought especially mysterious. While this is no doubt correct for excessive claims of a priority – for instance, claims to prori acces to features of the physical... 

As Davidson says, "Rorty sees the history of Western philosophy as a confused and victorless battle between unintelligible skepticism and lame attempts to answer it." Therefore we can say that the core issue of Epistemology, in various ages of history of philosophy, is the problem of skepticism. Semantic externalism according to some contemporary philosophers, like Hilary Putnam, Anthony Brueckner and Donald Davidson, gives various answers to skeptical arguments. On the other hand, skepticism also can be a challenge for semantic externalism. In this thesis, I have attempted to draw a scheme to clarify the status of these issues with regard to each other  

My dissertation includes four chapters; three introductory chapters and a final conclusion. The first chpter is a comprehensive introduction to the problem of consciousness. The next chapter is allocated to representationalism, especially Michael Tye's PANIC theory, as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness and related phenomena. The third chapter is a brife look at causal theories of mental content. And the last chapter contains my arguments agaisnt Tye's theory. Apparently, mental states are of two categories; some mental states have representational content and some other have phenomenal aspect; there is something it is like to undergo latter states. Representationalism holds... 

Polyethylene (PE) is used as an insulation material for wires and cables because of its excellent electrical properties. For such application, it can be exposed to the high energy irradiation such as gamma ray and electron beam (EB), making possible crosslinking of the PE. Most of the properties of PE are improved greatly after irradiation, but it was harden and split easily. Due to the flexibility of EVA, depending on the vinyl acetate content, it can improve the toughness of the LDPE significantly upon addition to this polymer. As a result, radiation induced LDPE/EVA blend has been a good candidate for the wire and cable insulation. Also, upon addition of a few amount of OC, different... 

In this dissertation, the thesis of Duhem-Quine holism will be intoduced and its similarity and dissimilarity in epistemolical webs of Duhem and Quine will be enumerated and criticisms that is taken to this thesis will be examined. In chapter 1 and 2, the fundamental characteristics of Duhem and Quine viewpoints will be introduced in sequence. This chapter is introduction to more accurate understanding of holism each of them and better Comparison together. In chapter 3, we will introduce their holism and we’ll see what the results of their holism in falsification and confirmation of different Hypotheses are. In chapter 4, we will discuss about discrepancy between their viewpoints and we... 

In Naming and Necessity and Identity and Necessity, Kripke convinced many that there are necessary propositions which are knowable only a posteriori. Kripke’s examples of these propositions can be placed into three categories: 1) Some mathematical propositions like Goldbach’s conjecture (the conjecture that every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes) 2) Scientific truths like “Water is H2O”, “Gold has the atomic number 79”, etc. 3) Identity statements flanked on both sides with proper names; like “Hesperus is Phosphorus”, “Cicero is Tully” and the like (in the rest of this article, these three categories will be called, respectively, the first, the second and... 

In his Mind, Brain and Free Will, Swinburne introduces a new argument for substance dualism based on the synchronic unity of humans’ conscious experiences. He argues that the human body cannot be the substance of such a synchronic unity, and that this coexperiencing property, which is a mental property, is the essential property of the human substance: hence our substance is a mental substance. After providing a careful explanation of Swinburne’s subtle argument, I first try to demonstrate that it is metaphysically possible that the brain itself could instantiate such a synchronic unity without the need to presume another substance. Then I shall argue that it is unclear how to infer the... 

This dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, a description of formation of Darwin's theory of Evolution is expressed. After that, the process of formation of modern theory of Evolution, along with an explanation of the theory of evolution and the evidence for it was mentioned. In the second season, which is responsible for the scientific study of the theory, at some point the evidence of this theory has been reviewed. After that, some of the challenges raised against this theory have been studied. The major scientific challenges described in this chapter is based on recent advances made in biology, based on that, the mechanism of theory can’t explain the complex... 

Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (1912-1989) is an analytic philosopher whose philosophy is famous for being deep, systematic and extremely influential and notorious for being difficult to read. Although he has many original and interconnected ideas in different branches of philosophy- including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, philosophy of language and meta-philosophy- the place of science in his system is completely indispensable. In his meta-philosophy, Sellars defines his philosophical project as an attempt to reconcile two distinct world-views of humanity in the modern word; scientific image and manifest image. Approaching Sellars’ philosophy by placing science at the... 

Michael Zimmerman in his book Living with Uncertainty has objected to two views of moral obligation, namely objective and subjective view. Two overcome these problems he suggests a third view which he calls prospective view and tells us that our moral obligation is determined by the prospection that each of our choices give us. In this thesis first I review Zimmerman’s objections to objective and subjective view. Then I try to suggest a solution for the objective view  

Technological capabilities as one of the growth’s aspects in developing countries have gained focus for research in last years. This study attempt to analyze the pattern of technological capabilities in four different sectors including Optic, Aerospace, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology. In each sectors four Iranian companies as the case studies are selected. After deep interviews with key people in each company, required data is gathered. Data in each company is analyzed. The results of analysis for companies in one sector are gathered for analyzing each sector. In order to evaluate technological capabilities, the time required to improve, lead-lag relationship for gaining higher levels of... 

The relationship between art and philosophy has been disputed for a long time and its history goes back to the ancient Greece. The dominant literary form at that time was poetry or tragedy, which are the first side of this relationship. On the other side was philosophical ethics. Plato and Aristotle are the main protagonists in this quarrel, which is known as the "Ancient Quarrel". I will first examine this quarrel and follow its different forms in the modern era, in which Hegel plays a prominent role by proposing the "end of art" thesis. By examining the criticisms made to this thesis, I will make clear the context in which the contemporary defenses that I explained in the following... 

One of the important issues in the philosophy of mind is the challange about the content of mental states, how the mind can refer to the world. To explain this special relationship that is not observed in the physical world, various mental models have been implemented, one of which is the connectionism model. Connectionist networks are based on the idea of biological neural networks, and the main concern of connectionism is modeling the brain and implementing human mind characteristics. The connectionist model was proposed by emphasizing the necessity of linking symbols with their original content and meaning. In this model, data representation is done in a holistic way and based on network... 

One of the important problems in the history of philosophy of Mind &Science is to respond this question: whether our observations which are the basics of our experiences are theory laden or not? theory-ladenness of observation thesis has been endorsed by Duhem and hansen and thomas kuhn,generally theory-ladensess of observation devide in two concepts, firstly it means the affection of on the observable terms secondly it relates to the affection of theories on our perception and phenomenology of experience. fodor claims that theories has nothing to do with our observation and churchland claims vice versa, both of these philosophers mention their own reasons and in this thesis we are looking... 

After Hume’s skeptical argument on the concept of causality and establishing the regularity theory of causation by him, it seemed that the regularity theory might not respond to irrelevance problems and spurious regularities. In the second half of the twentieth century, attempts were made, e.g. Hans Reichenbach's proposal of the “common cause principle,” for solving the problems of regularity theory which resulted in probabilistic approach to causal relationships. The importance of the common cause principle is that it has inspired the “Causal Markov Condition” which is the most fundamental condition for causal networks. The causal Markov condition states that a variable X is... 

When we talk about something being normative, it means that there are do’s and don’ts specific to that thing. When we say that language is normative, it means that it is governed by do's and don'ts and we cannot use linguistic structures arbitrarily. In other words, we have justifiable modes of linguistic use that failing to accord with them will distort the meaning of the propositions in the language. In the field of ethics, it may be easier to comprehend the concept of normativity. We all are in touch with ethics and ethical propositions in our daily lives. Beyond this bond, it seems that there is a kind of necessity for us. It seems that because of this necessity, acting in accordance...