A critical explication and comparison of the notion of judgment in the epistemologies of Immanuel Kant and Bernard J. F. Lonergan is developed with a view to exploring the nature and limits of human knowing. The study reveals that Kant is forced to ground his epistemology in immediate intuition and rigid, a priori concepts because he fails to distinguish between mere animal extroversion and rational inquiry, and because he overlooks the role of the virtually unconditioned. He therefore relegates to judgment a merely mechanical function limited in its scope exclusively to empirical employment. He is furthermore forced (because of his oversights) to the drastic distinction between phenomena and noumena, with all knowledge being restricted to phenomena. In contrast to Kant, Lonergan's epistemology is found to be far more promising. His explication of the virtually unconditioned as the sole grounds for judgment gives full rein to our desire to know and his critical distinction between mere extroversion and rational inquiry enables us to maintain a significant meaning to the notion of objectivity. Loneraan's account imposes no restrictive limits to the range of our knowing while yet being able to account for all its various dynamics and departments.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-205).

published_or_final_version / Psychiatry / Master / Master of Philosophy

This paper is an analysis of aspects of Daniel Dennett's theory of human consciousness. For Dennett, the reasons why human consciousness is so unique among earthly creatures, and so manifestly powerful, are not to be found in the differences between our brains and those of other higher mammals, but rather in the ways in which the plasticity of our brains is harnessed by language and culture. According to Dennett, the best way to understand the enhancements and augmentations that result from enculturation is as a von Neumannesque virtual machine implemented in the parallel-distributed processing brain. This paper examines two questions that arise from the latter hypothesis: (1) If nonsymbolic, parallel-distributed networks accomplish all the representation and computation of the brain, what kind of explanation of the functionality of that brain, can legitimately maintain descriptions of procedures that are symbolic, serial, and real? (2) What kind of structural design, training, and resultant processing dynamics could enable a (human) brain to develop a competency for symbolic, serial procedures? Through addressing these questions, I argue that Dennett's theory of consciousness is broadly correct, investigate some other theorist's ideas that are highly compatible with Dennett's work, and consider some criticisms that have been levelled against it. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 332-343).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Philosophy." Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-239).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Catharine H. Echols. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

No description available.

This paper examines a computational account about higher-level creativity proposed by Margaret A. Boden, a female psychologist and philosopher. She uses an interesting computational concept the “conceptual space” – known as “the box” in our everyday language – to measure levels of creativeness and to explain how higher-level creativity is achieved. In this paper, I mainly seek to look into detail and analyze her answers to the following two questions: “What does Boden mean by the ‘conceptual space?” and “How is it possible to think outside of the ‘conceptual space?” To that end, I have researched papers that commented on Boden’s computational account, and have come up with hypothetical cases to flesh out my arguments and to appeal to the readers’ intuitions. The conclusion of this paper is that the knowledge of yourself being inside particular boxes and the knowledge of what limits and potential a given conceptual space has are neither sufficient nor necessary for producing the kind of rule-breaking “outside-the-box” ideas, but the idea of a “conceptual space” remains useful in evaluating the quality of ideas after their generation. The philosophy of creativity is such an intriguing topic to me – we all value creativity as a society and have put “outside-the-box” type of thinking on the pedestal since the age of Plato. Yet when we think more about the idea of “outside-the-box” thinking, much ambiguity arises. This topic greatly sparks my interest in the philosophy of mind, and through research and self-introspection, I have not only learned more about the concept of creativity, but also discovered more about my own thinking style.

In Mind and World John McDowell argues that our attempts to understand how it is that our thoughts are rationally answerable to the world are in vain. Whether one takes Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology or Phenomenology to be capable of answering this question, such attempts are, he claims, merely a consequence of failing to see that they are already gripped by a picture of the world which precludes the possibility of such answers. In particular, he suggests that if we render Nature as that which is circumscribed by the intelligibility of the natural sciences, we leave no room for rationality conceived of in terms of the spontaneity and freedom that Kant associated with it. While McDowell claims to be a `quietist' who is not putting forward his own theory of mind, he is, at the very least, suggesting a theory of nature, one which he dubs `liberal' insofar as it suggests that we widen the scope of nature so that it can be hospitable to the normative features of thought. This thesis will propose a theory of mind which attempts to show how the causal, normative, and phenomenological can be seen as continuous features of the natural world. It demonstrates that a careful appraisal of causal or scientific accounts of intentionality can be made compatible with McDowell's commitment to the normativity of thought. By revealing that a biological account of the mind, suitably expanded to include an account of history as a Dynamic Ecological Milieu, generates biological interrogatives for the human organism, we can show that the normative manifests as an emergent property of the nomological. This allows second nature to retain its sui generis status while being continuous with the causal descriptions of first nature. This thesis will also draw from the Phenomenological tradition, as a means of critiquing McDowell's account of “the Myth of the Given" and his rejection of pre-conceptual content. In particular, it will follow Charles Taylor and Hubert Dreyfus in affirming that we should view experience, not in terms of that which provides epistemic foundations, but as the domain of pre-reflective embodiment. This is essential to showing how the biological sciences can inform us about the causal background which makes embodied coping so unreflectively natural. Furthermore, phenomenology has provided a means of engaging with the biological sciences in a non-reductive way, as is evidenced by Maurice Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and the more recent neurophenomenological tradition which is largely inspired by his work. Finally, by drawing on these resources, the desideratum of this thesis is a scientifically informed understanding of what McDowell calls “second nature" and “the space of reasons" in terms of what I have called “biological interrogatives" and the “phenomenology of epistemic agency".