Defenders of the Knowledge Argument contend that physicalism is false because knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient to know all the truths about the world. In particular, proponents of the Knowledge Argument claim that physicalism is false because the truths about the character of conscious experience are not knowable from the complete set of physical truths. This dissertation is a defense of the Knowledge Argument. Chapter one characterizes what physicalism is and provides support for the claim that if knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient to know all the truths about the world, then physicalism is false. In chapter two, I defend the claim that knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. In addition to mounting a prima facie case for the knowledge intuition, I present and defend an epistemology grounded in direct acquaintance to provide a more substantive argument to accept it. Chapters three through five address the physicalist objections to the Knowledge Argument. The first set of objections advocates that knowing all the physical truths is, in fact, sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. The next set of objections admits that there is some sense in which knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. However, these objections maintain that the kind of knowledge that is absent from the complete set of physical truths is know-how or knowledge by acquaintance, and not factual or propositional knowledge. The final set of objections maintain that the kind of propositional knowledge that is left out of the complete set of physical truths is compatible with physicalism. My response to these objections is part of advancing my prima facie case for the Knowledge Argument. The final chapter addresses a structural question that pertains to the Knowledge Argument. Some philosophers have maintained that the structure of the Knowledge Argument invites a kind of self-refutation of any systematic account of reality. The concern is that the Knowledge Argument proves too much, and that the dualist who uses the argument to refute physicalism risks the argument defeating his own position. I will argue that the Knowledge Argument does not refute dualism.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a brief examination of the historical accounts of philosophical theories of personal identity and show the influence that each has had on the development of contemporary theories. In doing so, the thesis explores the problems associated with these theories, attempting to establish a meta-theory (i.e. a theory about theories) of personal identity. What is demonstrated is that the fundamental problems of personal identity arise from issues related to the use of language, as well as assumptions involving the concept of personhood. By demonstrating that our understanding of personhood is relative to frameworks of understanding based on assumption, the meta-theory states that propositions made about persons are not factual statements, but are, rather, matters of contingency. As such, propositions about persons contain truth-value only within a particular frame of reference that is based on these assumptions. Therefore, the problems that traditionally arise in theories of personal identity -- problems with dualism, the mental criterion, and bodily criterion -- result from a flawed approach to the problem altogether. The conclusion is that it is possible to construct a theory of personal identity (a relative theory), but not the theory of personal identity (one which is definitive and strictly conclusive).

This dissertation is about the structure of thought. Following Gottlob Frege, I define a thought as the sort of content relevant to determining whether an assertion is true or false. The historical component of the dissertation involves interpreting Frege’s actual views on the structure of thought. I argue that Frege did not think that a thought has a unique decomposition into its component senses, but rather the same thought can be decomposed into senses in a variety of distinct ways. I extend Frege’s position and use it to develop an account of the hierarchy of senses, the senses expressed by indexicals and demonstratives, and the distinction between logical and non-logical structure. I also discuss various connections with the nature of meta-representation, our capacity for reflective judgment, some aspects of the structure of conscious experience, the way we perceive regions of space and durations of time, and our conscious awareness of our own perceptions and events of thinking.

In art and education, theorists dispute the concept of visuality, or how meaning occurs from what we see. This study examines two opposed and acrimoniously entrenched theoretical perspectives adopted internationally: visual culture and aesthetics. In visual culture, visual experience, including perception is mediated by background cultural discourses. On this approach, subjectivity is explained as conventional, the role of the senses in making meaning is strongly diminished or rejected and from this, accounting for visuality precludes indeterminate and intuitive aspects. Differently, aesthetic perspectives approach visual meaning as obtaining through direct perceptual and felt aspects of aesthetic experience. Here, subjectivity remains discrete from language and the role of cultural discourse in making meaning diminishes or is excluded. Each description is important to the explanation of visuality in art and education, but problematic. To start, the study outlines the central explanatory commitments of both visual culture and aesthetics. The study identifies problems in each with their explanations of subjectivity or self. Both positions maintain from earlier explanations of cognition that separate theoretically and practically the senses, cognitive processes, and context. The study looks at approaches to mind and representation in accounts of visuality and provides some background from the cognitive sciences to understand the problem further. Contemporary explanation from science and philosophy is revising the separation. However, some approaches from science are reductive of mind and both aesthetics and visual culture theorists are understandably reluctant to adopt scientistic or behaviourist approaches for the explanation of visual arts practices. The aim of the study is to provide a non-reductive realist account of visuality in visual arts and education. To accomplish this aim, the study employs philosopher John R. Searle's explanation of consciousness because it explores subjectivity as qualitative, unified, and intrinsically social in experience. By doing this, the study addresses a gap in the theoretical understanding of the two dominant approaches to visuality. The key to relations between subjectivity and the world in reasoning is the capacity for mental representation. From this capacity and the rational agency of a self, practical reasoning is central to the creation, understanding, and appreciation of art and imagery. This account of consciousness, its aspects, and how it works includes description of the Background, as capacities enabling the uptake and structuring of sociocultural influence in mind. Crucially, the study shows how the capacity for reasoned action can be represented without dualism or reduction to the explanatory constraints of behavioural or physical sciences, an important commitment in the arts and education. In this explanation, the study identifies epistemic constraints on the representation of mental states, including unconscious states, in accounting for practices as reasoned activities. Centrally, the study looks at how, from the capacities of consciousness and the self's freedom of will, visuality is unified as qualitative, cognitive, and social. In exploring Searle's explanation of consciousness, some account of current work on cognition extends discussion of a reconciliation of visuality on these terms.

自啟蒙運動(Enlightenment)以來，西方近代哲學彌漫一股強烈的人文訴求，要求提升人的意義與價值。本論文是就哲學的角度，以近代哲學之集大成者－康德(I. Kant)作為討論問題的起點，而康德哲學中所要求的人文意義之建立，正是以自主的理性為基礎，並且透過自我的反省與檢討決定中彰顯出來。而此種對自主理性的訴求，正反應了自近代以來人文價值與意義之建立的最佳註腳。然而，康德哲學自『實踐理性批判』之後卻尚且留下實踐理性與理論理性誰為優位的困境，很明顯的，康德是必須調強調實踐理性的優位性，也就是強調人所具有的理性能力必須發揮出來，但是到『實踐理性批判』的工作，這是一個未竟之志，因此本論文繼之以黑格爾(G. W. F. Hegel)得哲學，進一步地探討有關這之間的問題。在黑格爾的學說發展中，他將一切均化約在所謂的「絕對精神」(Absolute Spirit)的發展中，這也就是說，所有的現實發展之一切事物對黑格爾而言，都是屬於絕對精神邁向自身發展的環節之一，如此一來，他將康德的見實踐理性推至更為先驗與必然性，因為所有的意義發展都是在絕對精神的發展、也就是實踐中彰顯出來，所以黑格爾的工作是為康德的實踐理性作出一完美必然的詮釋。但是，繼之而起的少壯黑格爾學派(Young Hegel-ians)與馬克思，卻反省到黑格爾所謂的實踐意義，只不過是意識(Con-sciousness)的自我意識之轉變而已，基本上根本沒有接觸到現實的層面，充其量不過只是意識的落實而已。所以馬克思提出了「勞動」作為實踐的真實意義與動力所在，企圖將實踐理性所要求的實踐性真正地彰顯出來。透過馬克思對黑格爾的批判，近代哲學所要求的實踐與自主性算是完成其真正的計劃。

<p>Även om forskning i miljöområdet och forskning i psykologi har kommit långt saknas det forskningsansatser som förenar de två. Ambitionen med uppsatsen är att förena miljöområdet och psykologi genom att undersöka vilka faktorer som är bidragande orsak till miljöengagemang. Deltagarna var 91 studenter som svarade på en enkät där miljöengagemang studerades. Resultatet visade att det fanns ett signifikant samband mellan att tycka människor i världen var viktiga och ha ett miljöengagemang. Det fanns även ett positivt samband mellan om närstående var miljömedvetna och om deltagaren var det samt ett positivt samband mellan miljömedvetenhet i teorin och praktiken.</p>

<p>This essay focuses on how women and the woman emancipation are described in high school history textbooks from the years 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000, using the theories history consciousness and gender. Two textbooks are analyzed from each period. There are several gender theories, in this essay it is Yvonne Hirdman’s theory concerning woman- and gender history that is used. This means that the woman emancipation and women’s history are analyzed from the perspectives invisible, add, and-, how- and gender history. Concerning the theory history consciousness Jeisman’s four definitions are used. The woman’s role and the woman emancipation are also examined from the variables work, education and the woman’s role at home.</p><p>During analyzing the text books it became clear that the presence of a history consciousness and gender perspective gradually became higher the newer the textbook was which means there were big differences in the books from year 1970 to year 2000.</p>

The goal of the paper is to develop a framework in which to ground the analysis of the aesthetics of Western concert dance, particularly contemporary concert dance, in order to help dancers, choreographers, critics, and the general dance audience understand and discuss dance from the perspective of a common intellectual ground. Examined are the relationship between epochs in concert dance and the corresponding aesthetic theories and the elements that differentiate and unify contemporary concert dance from other Western concert dance, including the unique spatiotemporal nature of dance and the simultaneous presentation of universal human-ness and individual truth via the kinesthetic empathy of viewer and dancer. A brief explanation of phenomenology and of its parallels to the consciousness required of dancer, choreographer and viewer supports a phenomenological approach to a theory of Western contemporary concert dance as most relevant at this time.

Thesis (doctoral)--Jyväskylän yliopisto. / Summary in Finnish. Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-230).

This essay focuses on how women and the woman emancipation are described in high school history textbooks from the years 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000, using the theories history consciousness and gender. Two textbooks are analyzed from each period. There are several gender theories, in this essay it is Yvonne Hirdman’s theory concerning woman- and gender history that is used. This means that the woman emancipation and women’s history are analyzed from the perspectives invisible, add, and-, how- and gender history. Concerning the theory history consciousness Jeisman’s four definitions are used. The woman’s role and the woman emancipation are also examined from the variables work, education and the woman’s role at home. During analyzing the text books it became clear that the presence of a history consciousness and gender perspective gradually became higher the newer the textbook was which means there were big differences in the books from year 1970 to year 2000.