Thesis advisor: Richard Cobb-Stevens / This essay addresses the problems posed by proper names in regards to their relationship to that which they name (their "reference"). This relation of a name to its reference serves as a model for how language in general relates to the world as it actually is, making the question of what a name names of vital epistemological importance. The main problem posed by proper names is whether they simply denote, or whether they connote (i.e. have some informational content), and if they connote, what picture should we give of that content? This essay critiques a variety of theories about proper names, including those of Frege, Russell, Kripke, Searle, Evans, and Sainsbury. It concludes that names of unique entities do have informational content, in the form of a yet unspecified family of definite descriptions that rigidly designate an individual, which arises out of various causal chains of communication in a community. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

The law of the World Trade Organization (WTO) both explicitly and implicitly requires that a determination of causation be made at a number of points. In several of the WTO covered agreements, an important part of making a determination about causation involves separating those factors that are causative from those that are immaterial to the outcome in question (this process of separation is known as a 'non-attribution analysis'). This thesis argues that there are six parts of the law of the WTO that require, either explicitly or implicitly, that a causation and non-attribution analysis be undertaken. These are: (1) Safeguard Measures (Articles 2.1 and 4.2(a) and (b) of the Agreement on Safeguards ); (2) Anti-Dumping measures (Articles 3.1 and 3.5 of the Anti-Dumping Agreement ); (3) Countervailing Duties (Article 15.5 of the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement (SCM Agreement)); (4) Serious prejudice (Articles 5(c) and 6.3 of the SCM Agreement); (5) the relationship between a measure and its policy objective (Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and Article XIV of the General Agreement on Trade in Services ); and (6) the relationship between a responding Member's failure to comply with a DSB ruling and the complainant Member's level of nullification and impairment (Articles 22.6 of the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes and 4.10 of the SCM Agreement). This thesis will first examine the current approach in the jurisprudence to analysing causation and non-attribution in these parts of the law of the WTO. To that end, it will suggest that there is a trend in the current jurisprudence to attempt to make an a priori inference about the effects of a cause from the nature of the cause itself. This thesis will suggest that this approach reflects a misconception of causation, and it will propose an alternative, three-part methodology for interrogating causation based on the use of econometric analysis, which has been developed from guidance given by the Appellate Body in US-Wheat Gluten.

Reference is the relation held to obtain between an expression and what a speaker or thinker intends the expression to represent. Reference is a component of interpretation, the process of giving terms, sentences, and thoughts semantic content. An example of reference in a formal context involves the natural numbers, where each one can be taken to have a corresponding set-theoretic counterpart as its referent. In an informal context reference is exemplified by the relation between a name and the specific name-bearer when a speaker or thinker utters or has the name in mind. Recent debates over reference have concerned the mechanism of reference: How is it that we can refer? In informal contexts, externalists see the reference relation as explicable in terms of the salient causal relations involved in the naming of a thing, or a class of things, and the ensuing causal chains leading to a term’s use. Opponents of this view—internalists—see the reference relation as being conceptually direct, and they take the external approach to rely on untenable metaphysical assumptions about the world’s structure. Moreover, some internalists take the permutability—i.e. the consistent reinterpretation—of certain referential schemes to confound the externalist picture of reference. In this thesis I focus on the reference of theoretical terms in science, and I argue for an externalist treatment of natural kinds and other theoretical elements. Along the way I offer a defense of the externalist’s pre-theoretic metaphysical assumptions and emphasize their central role in the interpretation of scientific languages. The externalist approach acknowledges the necessary constraints on reference-fixing that account for the schemes we employ, and this, I argue, confounds the permutation strategy.

Since its discovery in 1984, psychological investigators have continued to explore the Flynn Effect, the phenomenon of consistent and secular IQ gains within industrialized nations approximating 0.3 points per year. The most contentious debate within this field of research surrounds the purported cause of the Effect, and yet the research literature lacks a synthesis of the leading causal theories and the evidence supporting them. The principal hypothesized causal mechanisms – psychometric artifact, educational intervention, environmental changes, nutrition, genetics, gene-environment interaction model, medical improvements, and the multiplicity hypothesis – are reviewed and analyzed within the larger breadth of Flynn Effect scholarly literature. Flynn Effect causal investigation has not yielded any decisive results, and the unproductive postulation of causal theories has recently stagnated, so researchers must accept a necessary shift in the focus of their research toward a more collaborative and holistic understanding of the Effect in order to effectively determine its causes. Extensive social implications of the Effect within the scopes of special education and judicial policy necessitate the expedited revitalization of Flynn Effect research such that contemporary society may be better able to appropriately incorporate the Effect into public policy.

Reference is the relation held to obtain between an expression and what a speaker or thinker intends the expression to represent. Reference is a component of interpretation, the process of giving terms, sentences, and thoughts semantic content. An example of reference in a formal context involves the natural numbers, where each one can be taken to have a corresponding set-theoretic counterpart as its referent. In an informal context reference is exemplified by the relation between a name and the specific name-bearer when a speaker or thinker utters or has the name in mind. Recent debates over reference have concerned the mechanism of reference: How is it that we can refer? In informal contexts, externalists see the reference relation as explicable in terms of the salient causal relations involved in the naming of a thing, or a class of things, and the ensuing causal chains leading to a term’s use. Opponents of this view—internalists—see the reference relation as being conceptually direct, and they take the external approach to rely on untenable metaphysical assumptions about the world’s structure. Moreover, some internalists take the permutability—i.e. the consistent reinterpretation—of certain referential schemes to confound the externalist picture of reference. In this thesis I focus on the reference of theoretical terms in science, and I argue for an externalist treatment of natural kinds and other theoretical elements. Along the way I offer a defense of the externalist’s pre-theoretic metaphysical assumptions and emphasize their central role in the interpretation of scientific languages. The externalist approach acknowledges the necessary constraints on reference-fixing that account for the schemes we employ, and this, I argue, confounds the permutation strategy.

Thomas S. Kuhn claimed that the meanings of scientific terms change in theory changes or in scientific revolutions. In philosophy, meaning change has been taken as the source of a group of problems, such as untranslatability, incommensurability, and referential variance. For this reason, the majority of analytic philosophers have sought to deny that there can be meaning change by focusing on developing a theory of reference that would guarantee referential stability. A number of philosophers have also claimed that Kuhn’s view can be explained by the fact that he accepted and further developed many central tenets of logical empiricism. I maintain that the genesis of Kuhn’s meaning theorising lies in his historical approach and that his view of meaning change is justified. Later in his career he attempted to advance a theory of meaning and can be said to have had limited success in it. What is more, recent cognitive science has unexpectedly managed to shed light on Kuhn’s insights on the organisation of information in the mind, concept learning, and concept definition. Furthermore, although Kuhn’s critique of Putnam’s causal theory of reference has often been dismissed as irrelevant, he has a serious point to address. Kuhn thought that the causal theory that works so well with proper names cannot work with scientific terms. He held that conceptual categories are formed by similarity and dissimilarity relations; therefore, several features and not only one single property are needed for determination of extension. In addition, the causal theory requires universal substances as points of reference of scientific terms. Kuhn was a conceptualist, who held that universals do not exist as mind-independent entities and that mind-dependent family resemblance concepts serve the role of universals. Further, at the beginning of his career, Kuhn was interested in the question of what concepts or ideas are and how they change in their historical context. Although he did not develop his theorising on this issue, I demonstrate that this is a genuine problem in the philosophy of history. Finally, Kuhn argued that scientists cannot have access to truth in history because we cannot transcend our historical niche, and as a consequence, the truth of a belief cannot be a reason for theory choice. Instead of truth, we can rely on justification. I also discuss Kuhn’s idea that problem-solving is the main aim of science and show that this view can be incorporated into coherentist epistemology.

<p>The first of the dual purposes of this work has been to describe the research that has been done regarding the root causes of terrorism and second, using a general causal theory and examining the political dimensions of it, to discuss whether or not general causal theories (grand-theories) are helpful for researchers and policy-makers when reacting to social developments in the form of terrorism. The essay is a qualitative literature analysis and I have based my studies on mostly new books treating root causes of terrorism. I have concentrated on discussing international terrorism and how political dimensions may impact the occurence of this form of political violence. The conclusions I have made is that there is no widespread consensus among researchers and scholars as to what really causes terrorism. Neither can the general model examined in chapter 5 be used to predict when and where terrorism will occur next. The author of the model says that different types of political systems may act as catalysts for terrorism, although some democracys are targeted by terrorists and some are not. That strongly indicates to me that there is no strong causality between type of political system and terrorism, at least not between type of political system and international terrorism.</p><p>The above leads me to believe that there is no way of constructing a grand-theory that can explain all occurence of terrorism. There will always be factors that cannot be charted and that no one can predict. If one were to continue mapping the political factors that catalyst terrorism one would do well by looking at the relationship between policy and the occurence of terrorism. What political factors do the countries that have been attacked have in common?</p><p>Instead of trying to manufacture grand-theories explaining why terrorism occurs I conclude that researchers and scholars studying the political causes of terrorism ought to approach terrorismstudies in an intense empirical way, analyzing specific cases in depth. Policy-makers would also be better off analyzing the specific political factors of their time and geographical location rather than trying to adopt a view that all terrorism can be charted and prevented in a universal way.</p>

This Thesis engages with contemporary philosophical controversies about the nature of dispositional properties or powers and the relationship they have to their non-dispositional counterparts. The focus concerns fundamentality. In particular, I seek to answer the question, ‘What fundamental properties suffice to account for the manifest world?’ The answer I defend is that fundamental categorical properties need not be invoked in order to derive a viable explanation for the manifest world. My stance is a field-theoretic view which describes the world as a single system comprised of pure power, and involves the further contention that ‘pure power’ should not be interpreted as ‘purely dispositional’, if dispositionality means potentiality, possibility or otherwise unmanifested power or ability bestowed upon some bearer. The theoretical positions examined include David Armstrong’s Categoricalism, Sydney Shoemaker’s Causal Theory of Properties, Brian Ellis’s New Essentialism, Ullin Place’s Conceptualism, Charles Martin’s and John Heil’s Identity Theory of Properties and Rom Harré’s Theory of Causal Powers. The central concern of this Thesis is to examine reasons for holding a pure-power theory, and to defend such a stance. This involves two tasks. The first requires explaining what plays the substance role in a pure-power world. This Thesis argues that fundamental power, although not categorical, can be considered ontologically-robust and thus able to fulfil the substance role. A second task—answering the challenge put forward by Richard Swinburne and thereafter replicated in various neo-Swinburne arguments—concerns how the manifestly qualitative world can be explained starting from a pure-power base. The Light-like Network Account is put forward in an attempt to show how the manifest world can be derived from fundamental pure power.

Silence is a negative term denoting absence of sounds. However, our ordinary way of speaking about silence suggests that the latter is some perceptible reality, 'some- thing' perceived. But is it legitimate to say that we hear silence - absence of sound? What implications about perception does such a way of speaking have? The aim of the present thesis is to analyse these questions. The analysis unfolds along three axes. The first part of the thesis reconstructs the problem of perception of silence in John Cage's 'silent piece' 4'33" in context of its conceptual origin, Cage's aesthetics, and reflection of his work in his written texts. Hence the introduction of the problem of perceptible silence in recent thought. It discusses the thesis that we cannot hear absolute silence, not even in the soundproof chamber, and considers the question whether it is adequate to say that we can hear silence if we expect to hear music, but the music does not sound - a question that was raised by the premiere of 4'33". The second part of the thesis scrutinizes the position according to which we can directly hear/listen to silence which is the absence of sounds, namely the arguments of Roy Sorensen and Ian Phillips. Emphasis is put on Sorensen's theory since it is in direct contrast to Cage's position (though Sorensen...

The first of the dual purposes of this work has been to describe the research that has been done regarding the root causes of terrorism and second, using a general causal theory and examining the political dimensions of it, to discuss whether or not general causal theories (grand-theories) are helpful for researchers and policy-makers when reacting to social developments in the form of terrorism. The essay is a qualitative literature analysis and I have based my studies on mostly new books treating root causes of terrorism. I have concentrated on discussing international terrorism and how political dimensions may impact the occurence of this form of political violence. The conclusions I have made is that there is no widespread consensus among researchers and scholars as to what really causes terrorism. Neither can the general model examined in chapter 5 be used to predict when and where terrorism will occur next. The author of the model says that different types of political systems may act as catalysts for terrorism, although some democracys are targeted by terrorists and some are not. That strongly indicates to me that there is no strong causality between type of political system and terrorism, at least not between type of political system and international terrorism. The above leads me to believe that there is no way of constructing a grand-theory that can explain all occurence of terrorism. There will always be factors that cannot be charted and that no one can predict. If one were to continue mapping the political factors that catalyst terrorism one would do well by looking at the relationship between policy and the occurence of terrorism. What political factors do the countries that have been attacked have in common? Instead of trying to manufacture grand-theories explaining why terrorism occurs I conclude that researchers and scholars studying the political causes of terrorism ought to approach terrorismstudies in an intense empirical way, analyzing specific cases in depth. Policy-makers would also be better off analyzing the specific political factors of their time and geographical location rather than trying to adopt a view that all terrorism can be charted and prevented in a universal way.