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".

This dissertation examines the significance of the politics of classification to how we have come to understand and study practices of protest and dissent. I trace the politics of classification in the history of political thought, and highlight how the categories of thought often most deeply associated with the promises of the Euro-modern Enlightenment constitute both aspirations and limits to questions of dissent and political transformation. These modern aspirations and limits, I argue, have tended to fall into one of two traditions – a Kantian/Foucauldian tradition and a Hegelian/Marxian tradition. While the Hegelian/Marxian tradition involves a specific, progressivist theory of the subject, lines of thought associated with this tradition tend to be reductionist. By contrast, the Kantian/Foucauldian tradition is not reductionist in the same way as the Hegelian/Marxian, and involves both an ontological and an epistemological theory of classification, but is constrained by its own constitutive limits. I apply these theoretical insights to a study of how a range of sympathetic, progressivist commentators – from journalists, to activists, to academics – have attempted to explain the 2009-2013 wave of global protests. Examining commentaries that discuss and link events ranging from the Syntagma Square and indignadas protests in Greece and Spain, the Occupy Wall Street movement and the summer 2013 protests in Brazil, Turkey and Bulgaria, I show that these commentaries claim novel politics but ignore the politics of classification within which their own work operates. This lack of attention paid to the politics of classification by both participants and commentators in progressive politics is symptomatic of a hegemony of the particular classificatory practices and categories I have identified. I suggest that explanations of protests often clustered around three key issues – or three ways that commentators claimed something was changing – claims to novelty, claims to the emergence of new forms of subjectivity, and claims around changing structures of authority. To take seriously the question of dissent, I conclude that we must take into account the epistemological inheritances within which our claims about practices of dissent are located. / Graduate / 2020-08-20

Thesis advisor: Ronald Tacelli / Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Reid are philosophers who, while writing from very different historical and intellectual contexts, both share a common conviction as epistemological realists. This paper will argue that, despite any initial appearances of conflict, their arguments and conclusions are both compatible and complementary, and that through such an agreement we can come to a richer understanding of the realist tradition. At the heart of this unity lie the shared principles that: * Knowledge involves a direct apprehension of things themselves. * Ideas are not themselves objects or intermediaries, but the active means by which the intellect understands. * The relationship between the mind and its object is not one of a material likeness, but of a formal likeness. * The existence of external objects of knowledge is not demonstrable, but is a self-evident first principle. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

The study of personal epistemology is concerned with people‟s beliefs or assumptions about the nature of knowledge and knowing, otherwise referred to as epistemological assumptions. As a relatively new field of enquiry, questions about the nature and scope of the construct and how best to investigate it have been tackled by many researchers although fundamental questions still remain. The current study explored the possible effects of three characterisations of questions aimed at eliciting epistemological assumptions on conclusions drawn about such assumptions in terms of their level of sophistication. The three characterisations explored were the level of directness with which questions targeted epistemological assumptions, the domain-specificity of the question, and whether the questions were open or closed-ended. A paper-and-pencil measure was designed to manipulate these variables, and the conclusions drawn about the assumptions of a sample of 30 postgraduate Psychology students were compared across the conditions to determine if there was any evidence for their influence. Comparison of results suggested that the characterisations do exert an influence and caution is raised regarding the validity of methodologies that have been, and continue to be, employed in the study of personal epistemology. The findings further lend support to particular conceptualisations of the construct, but at the same time also unearth additional questions about how epistemological beliefs are best construed and studied.

The conventional wisdom is the epistemological strategy of rejecting conspiracy theories prior to investigation based on the presumption that such theories are almost always irrational. However, if a conspiracy theory is simply a theory which posits conspiracies and history is chock-a-block with conspiracies, then why should we generally reject conspiracy theories prior to investigation? Charles Pigden argues that precisely because conspiracies are historically common in the realm of power politics there will be conspiracy theories that are importantly true. Hence, there is a prima facie case for adopting an epistemological strategy which obligates epistemological agents to investigate conspiracy theories and believe them if that is what the evidence suggests. The paper evaluates the epistemic consequences of the conventional wisdom through the lens of Pigden’s critique and addresses if conspiracy theories are associated with specific epistemological problems that could justify the conventional wisdom. As a theoretical contribution the paper considers an argument which could undermine the intended purpose of the conventional wisdom as an epistemological strategy. If most conspiracy theories are defunct then conspiracy theoreticians must either be generally paranoid and/or be intentionally pushing ideological rather than epistemological objectives. On the conventionalist view, many conspiracy theoreticians must therefore be part of a conspiracy themselves implying that the conventionalist has constructed   a conspiracy theory as an unintended consequence of generally rejecting conspiracy theories.

Thesis advisor: Jean-Luc Solère / The purpose of my dissertation is to explore the relation of Spinoza's epistemology to his account of religion and politics in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP). It has long been recognized that Spinoza considers revealed religion an instance of the first kind of knowledge (or imagination), but this has usually been taken as evidence of a reductive or esoteric critique of religion. Since the imagination, in Spinoza's view, plays an irreducible role in social life, I aim to show that religion can also constitute a potentially constructive force in promoting social solidarity. While Spinoza undoubtedly opposes religious fanaticism and superstition, he does so, not by rationally (or indirectly) undermining revealed religion as a whole, but by nourishing a socially salutary form of religion. This insight is valuable for understanding the unity of the TTP: why Spinoza wrote a theological-political treatise and not a treatise on the externally related topics of theology and politics. In Spinoza's view, I argue, it is only by promoting a religion of justice, charity, and hence genuine community that he can both oppose the despotic abuse of superstition and support democracy in his immediate socio-political milieu and beyond. In the first chapter, I examine Spinoza's assessment of religious images in terms of their ability to support or undermine social cohesion. While Spinoza notoriously decries the dangers of the imagination in the Ethics, he nonetheless reserves a central role for it in his account of religious and political communities. I interpret this in light of two intersecting historical trajectories. In Chapter 2, I provide a detailed account of the political, religious, and intellectual conditions of the Dutch republic during the seventeenth century, showing how Spinoza attempts to use religious images to address a crisis of national identity (a crisis shared, in his view, by all newly instituted states). In Chapter 3, I investigate the role that the imagination plays in certain medieval and reformation accounts of religious knowledge (those of Alfarabi, Maimonides, and Calvin), in order to show the extent to which Spinoza's epistemology of religion consists in a constructive synthesis of these sources. Spinoza concludes that revelation is a product of the imagination, and hence it cannot be a source of metaphysical or scientific knowledge, but that precisely for that reason it can and was always intended to serve as an inspiring moral guide. Chapter 4 provides a close analysis of Spinoza's own account of religious knowledge⎯focusing on revelation and scripture⎯in light of his understanding of the imagination. I argue that Spinoza attempts to reorient the imagination of his readers away from a miraculous understanding of prophecy as a product of transcendent divine intervention in order to embrace a view in which the prophets would act as imitable exemplars within a moral community. In Chapter 5, I maintain that this understanding of revelation forms the basis of Spinoza's approach to both hermeneutics and politics in the TTP. Spinoza uses the moral image of prophecy to oppose superstition and despotism by revitalizing the morally edifying and⎯in his view⎯democratic spirit of revelation and scripture. I conclude by emphasizing some of the ways in which Spinoza's approach might helpfully inform contemporary debates concerning secularization and the role of religion in the public sphere. In sum, I attempt to show that, by denying the metaphysical or scientific status of religious images, Spinoza does not intend to dispute or undermine their constructive potential; instead, he attempts to liberate them for their true purpose as he sees it: the moral edification of religious and political communities. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Tradições acadêmicas no ensino da ecologia, assim como livros-texto convencionais redigidos de forma enciclopédica muitas vezes mascaram uma história de grandes controvérsias que existe por trás dos fundamentos teóricos desta disciplina. Muitos ecólogos são formados sem se darem conta dos diversos debates conflituosos que certamente circundam o corpo teórico de seus programas de pesquisa. Contudo, basta um aprofundamento mínimo na literatura para que se perceba a grande confusão que se transformou a formalização teórica da ecologia. Com suas raízes na história natural do século XIX e com uma ênfase empiricista, a ecologia passou por uma fase de formalização teórica calcada em uma episteme dedutivo-nomológica e na modelagem matemática de sistemas dinâmicos no começo do século XX. Este enfoque no aspecto conjectural da ecologia se consolidou na década de 1960 e muitos pesquisadores passaram a alegar que este seria o método ideal para a formalização de teorias sólidas e gerais. Entretanto, na década seguinte se inicia um contra-movimento, que criticou duramente esta escola alinhada ao pensamento dos físicos, culminando em debates que resultaram em posturas de radicalismo extremo em relação a qual é o objeto de estudo da ecologia e como o ecólogo deve proceder em sua atividade. Neste momento, passa a ser crucial que o cientista se volte à filosofia e à história das ciências para entender mais profundamente as origens e os motivos dessas confusões. Este conhecimento se faz necessário para que o ecólogo possa se posicionar criticamente dentro destas controvérsias e assim (re)definir seu próprio programa de pesquisa com mais coerência. Contudo, é preciso estar preparado para uma jornada psicologicamente intensa. Para muitos, esta empreitada histórico-filosófica gera um sentimento de frustração (no mínimo um grande desconforto intelectual) ao perceberem que a epistemologia não provê uma resposta simples e consensual para perguntas muito básicas como: o que é um conhecimento cientificamente válido? Quais são os fundamentos da teoria ecológica? A falta de treinamento em epistemologia associado à uma relutância psicológica em se envolver na área, mantiveram grande parte dos ecólogos afastada do debate filosófico, fazendo com que alguns equívocos sobre a ciência ecológica se propagassem por gerações. Assim, disputas intermináveis se sucederam na literatura dividindo os ecólogos ao invés de unir-los. Criou-se uma sensação geral de que há uma dicotomia entre teoria e empiria (também vista na forma de uma dicotomia conjectura-inferência), o que me parece um problema grave pois essa divisão é ilusória; a ciência é uma fusão desses dois componentes. Esta percepção dicotômica se estende a outros temas epistemológicos muito relevantes (\\textit{e.g.} indução ou dedução, descrição de padrões ou explicação por processos e mecanismos causais, generalidade ou precisão), o que a meu ver é prejudicial para um avanço fluente do conhecimento. Esta tese é uma tentativa de contextualizar historicamente o desenvolvimento do pensamento ecológico e revisar criticamente o debate epistemológico científico, assim como algumas controvérsias heurísticas relacionadas à modelagem de padrões e processos ecológicos, para então prover um argumento favorável ao pluralismo epistemológico na ecologia. Ao final, faço uma síntese das controvérsias epistemológicas, apresentando uma proposta de como conceber um programa de pesquisa em ecologia aberto ao pluralismo epistemológico. Para isso, valerei-me da noção de caixa preta epistemológica e de redes complexas de conhecimento tanto para mostrar que o pluralismo epistemológico pode ser visto como uma questão cultural intrínseca da ciência, como também para sugerir que uma postura colaborativa em detrimento de uma competitiva (conflituosa) é muito mais intuitiva e coerente para um ecólogo do século XXI. Acredito que uma predisposição ao sincretismo cultural em detrimento de um etnocentrismo “irracional” tem grande potencial de catalisar o avanço atravancado e controverso da ciência ecológica / Academic traditions in teaching ecology, as well as conventional encyclopedical textbooks often mask a history of great controversies behind the theoretical bases of this discipline. Many ecologists are trained without realizing the many conflicting debates that surround the theoretical body of the research programs they are inserted in. However, a simple deepening in the literature is enough to sense the confusion that theoretical formalization of ecology has become. With its roots in 19th century natural sciences and with empiricist emphasis, ecology went through a phase of theoretical formalization based on a deductive-nomological epistemology and in mathematical modeling of dynamic systems in the beginning of 20th century. This focus on the conjectural aspect of ecology consolidated in the 60\'s and many researchers claimed this would be the ideal method to formalize solid and general theories. Yet in the following decade a counter-movement began, strongly criticizing this school of thought aligned with physicists, culminating in debates that resulted in extreme radicalism regarding the definition of ecology\'s study subject and how the ecologist should proceed in his activity. At this point it becomes crucial to the scientist to face philosophy and the history of sciences to further understand the origins and reasons for these confusions. This knowledge enables the ecologist to critically position oneself within these controversies and thus (re)define his own research program coherently. One should be prepared however, for an intense psychological journey. For many this historical-philosophical quest brings a sense of frustration (a great intellectual discomfort at least) since the epistemology does not provide a simple and consensual answer to basic questions such as: what is a valid scientific knowledge? What are the bases of ecological theory? This way, the lack of training in epistemology associated with psychological reluctance to get involved in this area, have kept most ecologists away from the philosophical debate, allowing some mistakes and misconceptions about the ecological sciences to propagate for generations. Thus, endless disputes in the literature divided ecologists instead of uniting them. A general sense was created that there is a dichotomy between theory and empiricism (also seen as a dichotomy between conjecture-inference), which seems to me as a serious problem given this division is illusory; science is the fusion of these two components. This dichotomous perception extends to other very important epistemological themes (e.g. induction or deduction, pattern description or explanation through causal processes and mechanisms, generality or precision), what hampers the advancement of ecological knowledge. This thesis is an attempt to contextualize historically the development of ecological thought and critically review the scientific epistemological debate, as well as some heuristic controversies related to modeling of ecological patterns and processes, to provide a favorable argument towards an epistemological pluralism in ecology. Finally, I synthesize the epistemological controversies, proposing how to conceive a research program in ecology opened to epistemological pluralism. For such I\'ll make use of the notion of an epistemological black box and of complex knowledge networks, both to show that epistemological pluralism can be seen as a cultural matter intrinsic to science, and also to suggest that a collaborative attitude instead of a competitive (conflicting) is much more intuitive and coherent with the 21st century ecologist. I believe that a predisposition to cultural syncretism in place of an “irrational” ethnocentrism has great potential to catalyze the advancement of the hampered and controversial science of ecology

This project is about what I am calling an “erotic epistemology” in nineteenth-century English elegiac poetry, a condition or event in a poetic text in which the discourses of love and knowledge are, to use a term Shelley liked to describe the experience of love, “intermixed.” The persistence of this inter-discourse suggests some fundamental connection between the desire for love and the desire for knowledge. Curiously, these performances of erotic longing insist urgently in the rhetorical, formal, and somatic registers of elegiac poetry in the nineteenth century. The confrontation with death that elegy stages is ideal for thinking about the relationship between erotic desire and poetic knowledge. As the limit case of a mind confronting an ultimately unknowable condition, the furthest expression of an impossible desire—the desire for the dead—elegies are love poems as well as death poems. This dissertation argues that Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Adonais for John Keats (1821), Alfred Tennyson’s In Memoriam for Arthur Hallam (1850), Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Ave Atque Vale for Charles Baudelaire (1867), and Thomas Tod Stoddart’s The Death-Wake (1831), perform the poetics of mourning as an erotic discourse, and allow an intimate understanding of a dead other that is an experience of pleasure. Much scholarship on the concept of eros considers it nearly synonymous with sexual desire and bodily pleasure. This project establishes a mode of reading elegy through its figures and forms that conceptualizes eros in these poems beyond sexuality, and without the burdens of biography and history. By stepping outside the critical confines of generic convention, literary influence, and eros-as-sexual want, this dissertation reevaluates the interpretive possibilities of erotic desire and language in a genre that is not commonly read as an amorous mode of speech. For these elegists, knowledge itself is an object of amorous desire, and epistemological want is a motive force of poetic mourning. These poems arrive at the pleasure of this knowledge through verse forms and figures of speech that perform an intimate textual relationship between the living and the dead, and when these linguistic events occur, the elegies reveal themselves as love poems.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The purpose or the dissertation is to compare the epistemology and theodicy or Edward John Carnell with that or Edgar Sheffield Brightman in order to draw out philosophic conructs between the two philosophers. Their basic epistemological conflict concerns philosophic starting point. For Brightman, epistemological starting points other than the diversified unity or present consciousness (datum self, shining present) are either limiting abstractions or inferences (reliable and unreliable) from this datum self. For Brightman the datum self (with its experiences immediately given) is undeniable tact. Since the truth or claims is not directly given, claims must be tested. However, insisting that starting point dominates method, conclusion, and criterion or truth, Carnell rates one area or experience (namely, "internal ertable experience," innate norms, or Augustine's "eternal concepts") as well as a truth-claim (namely, the Bible as infallible) as having superior epistemological value [TRUNCATED]. / 2031-01-01

Essa dissertação tem como objetivo estabelecer uma articulação atual entre psicanálise e ciência. A partir do reconhecimento de alguns equívocos frequentemente presentes no modo como este debate é desenvolvido, primeiramente é realizado um exame da maneira como o psicanalista Jacques Lacan trata essa questão, indicando que se deve evitar dois erros comuns: a ideia de que a ciência rejeita o sujeito e a confusão entre ciência e discurso da ciência. Esses equívocos parecem ser consequências ou de leituras pouco rigorosas do texto lacaniano, ou de uma concepção de ciência desatualizada. Em sequência, são examinados alguns avanços no campo da filosofia da ciência, assim como críticas ao pensamento psicanalítico daí originadas, a partir de autores como Kuhn, Feyerabend, Granger e Grünbaum. Reconhece-se a questão da validação extraclínica enquanto ponto comum de ataques, indicando-se a importância da validação na possibilidade de circulação do conhecimento produzido para além de seu lugar de origem. Frente a isso, alguns estudos de validação experimental são analisados, concluindo-se que existe uma articulação possível entre psicanálise e ciências experimentais, sem prejuízos para a clínica ou a ética psicanalítica. Esse tipo de articulação é extremamente importante para uma participação política mais efetiva por parte da psicanálise, além de trazer interessantes contribuições o debate epistemológico / This dissertation has as goal to establish an articulation between psychoanalysis and science that takes into consideration the state of the art of the debate. Departing from the acknowledgment of some frequently present misconceptions of the way this debate is developed, initially an analysis of the way the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan treats the issue is done, indicating how one should avert two common mistakes: the idea that Science rejects the subject and the blurring of what is science and what is the discourse of science. These misconceptions seem to be consequences of either the lack of an accurate reading of the lacanian text or an outdated conception of Science.. After that, some advances on the philosophical field - as well as critics to the psychoanalytical thought originated from there - are analysed with the support of authors like Kuhn, Feyerabend, Granger e Grünbaum. The issue of extra-clinical validation as a common point for attacks is acknowledged as well as the importance of validation in the possibility of circulation of the knowledge that is produced beyond its origin place. Taking that into account, some experimental studies on validation are analysed with the perspective that an articulation between psychoanalysis and experimental sciences is possible without any harm to the clinic or the ethics of psychoanalysis. This kind of articulation is extremely important for a more effective political participation of psychoanalysis, and for contributing in an interesting way for the epistemological debate