My Senior Thesis “A Unified Analysis of Teleology” Now Available Online
Woo! I just got done converting my senior thesis paper into PDF form. You can view it by clicking here.
My Preface (included in the PDF):
This paper is a culmination of the undergraduate philosophy program at Biola University, which tests the student’s skills to rationally respond to academic philosophical material. The paper itself is the result of a semester’s worth of research work and is required for the undergraduate philosophy major.
At the time I wrote this, I had attended Biola for two years and had taken every class required for the Philosophy major except a class in Metaphysics, which I was to take the following semester. I really enjoyed working on this, as I learned much more about current studies in teleology, something that is by-and-large neglected in philosophy today. After I had completed writing, my material was presented at the 2006 Senior Colloquium on May 17, which is held each year for senior philosophy majors to present their work.
My presentation was a blend of reading straight from the following paper and an improvised talk based on the main points I wished to present. The result, if I remember correctly, was me reading the Introduction to the paper word-for-word, then an improvised discussion of the major points in the paper, then a return to a word-for-word read when I came to Larry Wright’s Unified Analysis of teleology and my modification to it. I wish I had recorded the talk I gave!
Anyhow, here’s a nice PDF version of my paper, something which represents much thoroughly enjoyable work. I’ve included lots of extra things to this PDF, from the original colloquium announcement to the response and grade I received on this paper. You can find all these things listed in the Table of Contents. Also, one final word: I would have preferred to have converted the endnotes to footnotes for the sake of readability, but the program I use (Open Office) doesn’t have this feature (although it does have the feature to convert footnotes to endnotes!). For this reason, my paper itself will be presented last, with even the Bibliography preceding it.
Enjoy!
David Calhoun (December 2, 2006)