Western science claims to provide unique, objective information about the world. This is supported by the observation that peoples across cultures will agree upon a common description of the physical world. Further, the use of scientific instruments and mathematics is claimed to enable the objectification of science. In this work, carried out by reviewing the scientific literature, the above claims are disputed systematically by evaluating the definition of physical reality and the scientific method, showing that empiricism relies ultimately upon the human senses for the evaluation of scientific theories and that measuring instruments cannot replace the human sensory system. Nativist and constructivist theories of human sensory development are reviewed, and it is shown that nativist claims of core conceptual knowledge cannot be supported by the findings in the literature, which shows that perception does not simply arise from a process of maturation. Instead, sensory function requires a long process of learning through interactions with the environment. To more rigorously define physical reality and systematically evaluate the stability of perception, and thus the basis of empiricism, the development of the method of dimension analysis is reviewed. It is shown that this methodology, relied upon for the mathematical analysis of physical quantities, is itself based upon empiricism, and that all of physical reality can be described in terms of the three fundamental dimensions of mass, length and time. Hereafter the sensory modalities that inform us about these three dimensions are systematically evaluated. The following careful analysis of neuronal plasticity in these modalities shows that all the relevant senses acquire from the environment the capacity to apprehend physical reality. It is concluded that physical reality is acquired rather than given innately, and leads to the position that science cannot provide unique results. Rather, those it can provide are sufficient for a particular environmental setting.

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

This thesis explores the ways in which professionals (in particular, social work professionals) define, produce, transfer, use, develop and disseminate knowledge of and for their profession and their practice. The thesis considers the issue(s) of professional knowledge from three related but distinct perspectives: philosophical, methodological and professional. From a philosophical perspective, the thesis articulates and examines the underpinning principles of epistemology and considers to what extent the professional social work knowledge debate has been informed by reference to these, and whether the application of appropriate epistemic principles has anything to offer the professions(s) in terms of its knowledge requirements. Methodologically, the thesis is informed by the history of the philosophy of science regarding the nature of inquiry. These considerations provide a clear paradigmatic rationale and context for the utilisation of a mixed-methods approach to the empirical content, with Q-Factor analysis being the quantitative method of choice, supported by semi-structured interviews. From a professional perspective, the thesis explores the views of those professionals actively engaged in those processes of defining, producing, transferring, using, developing and disseminating knowledge of and for social work. These three perspectives are here combined to provide a means by which the views and understandings of professionals can be articulated in meaningful ways and used to inform future discussion and practice regarding professional knowledge forms. The findings within this thesis reveal the differing ways professional social workers both theorise about and engage with knowledge in its many and varied forms. The findings also highlight the ways in which influences external to the individual affect how knowledge is, or is not used, and how some forms of knowledge appear to have preferential status. The conclusions suggest ways of responding to and addressing these issues by reference to a new pragmatic epistemology for the profession(s), which takes cognisance of the contemporary professional zeitgeist.

It is all but universally accepted in epistemology that knowledge is factive: S knows that p only if p. The purpose of this thesis is to present an argument against the factivity of knowledge and in doing so develop a non-factive approach to the analysis of knowledge. The argument against factivity presented here rests largely on empirical evidence, especially extant research into visuomotor noise, which suggests that the beliefs that guide everyday motor action are not strictly true. However, as we still want to attribute knowledge on the basis of successful motor action, I argue that the best option is to replace factivity with a weaker constraint on knowledge, one on which certain false beliefs might still be known. In defence of this point, I develop the non-factive analysis of knowledge, which demonstrates that a non-factive constraint might do the same theoretical work as factivity.

This dissertation offers new answers to the ethical questions posed by Homer’s epics by implementing interdisciplinary methods and perspectives. Drawing insights from anthropology, literary criticism, philosophy, and psychology, I construct an ethical model, which evaluates ethical systems not primarily as a means of regulating conduct but as a means of endowing particular actions with exemplary significance. My methodology, which is based on this ethical model, approaches ethics as a complex system that can never be adequately described in its totality but only in reference to specific human problematics. The problematic I investigate is death: how it serves as an opportunity for Homeric heroes to pursue the most significant kind of life they can in light of their mortality. The Homeric hero is obliged to protect his “lot” in life as his birthright and property in the divinely-governed world; he is obliged also to recognize the limits of his lot and respect the lot of other noblemen by rendering them due honor. Not all lots are equal, of course, and certain ethical sensibilities are required to negotiate the social domain properly. The Iliad and Odyssey illustrate what ethical sensibilities come into play as their exemplars struggle against a diverse range of human vicissitudes. Three sensibilities are especially important: (1) a sense of culturally appropriate restraint out of fear of retribution, (2) a sense of culturally appropriate anger upon seeing shameless behavior, (3) a sense of culturally appropriate love/friendship and pity that opens a path for even strangers to be treated as intimates, i.e. to have their needs met. Corresponding to these sensibilities are battle customs and civic customs. A heroic death garners significance from occurring either under the auspices of battle customs or under the auspices of civic customs. The Iliad illustrates good death in war as a “beautiful death,” and the Odyssey illustrates good death in the community as a “gentle death.” Death is the culmination of one’s living actions, and glorious actions are worthy of being remembered by a community in song. Even when a hero no longer can act in the world, he is able, if his actions are preserved in memory, to participate in the life of the community. To be remembered and honored “equally to a god” is the greatest good a mortal can have, insofar as it approximates the immortal existence of the gods. In my conclusion, I also discuss methods of researching the reception of Homeric ethics, especially by Plato.

Recent literature concerning laws of nature highlight the close relationship between general metaphysics and philosophy of science. In particular, a person's theoretical commitments in either have direct implications for her stance on laws. In this dissertation, I argue that an ontic structural realist should be a realist about laws, but only within a non-Whiteheadean process framework. Without the adoption of a process framework, any account of laws the ontic structural realist offers will require metaphysical commitments that are at odds with ontic structural realism. In arguing towards this aim, I adopt an attenuated methodological naturalistic stance to show that traditional substance metaphysics, of the sort neo-Aristotelians endorse, is problematic and that we have naturalistic reasons for further developing process metaphysics. I then apply this framework to develop a processual account of mereological structures and show how we can understand structures as being stable processes. In the final section, I argue that these are the kind of structures with which the ontic structural realist concerns herself. By adopting a realist account of laws the ontic structural realist can explain how these structures enter into modal and causal relations.

This thesis argues that the most prominent account of Protagoras in contemporary rhetorical scholarship, Edward Schiappa's Protagoras and Logos, loses critical historiographical objectivity in Platonic overdetermination of surviving historical artifacts. In the first chapter, I examine scholarship from the past thirty years to set a baseline for historiographical thought and argue that John Muckelbauer's conception of productive reading offers the best solution to the intellectual and discursive impasse in which contemporary Protagorean rhetorical theory currently resides. The second chapter explains the pitfalls of Platonic overdetermination and the ways in which Plato himself was inextricably situated within an ideological blinder, from which fair treatment of competing philosophical ideology becomes impossible. Finally, I argue for a historical Protagoras free of Platonic overdetermination by looking to Mario Untersteiner's 1954 Sophists. Untersteiner looks to Plato not for an accurate historical account, but for insight into why the great philosopher found the sophists to be such great perturbations. Rediscovering Protagoras through a Sophistic paradigm, I hope to open space for new, productive discourse on the first Sophist.

This thesis describes the way in which sound is taken up and subsequently suppressed within the visual arts. The idealisation and development of sound as a plastic material is able to be traced within the modernist trajectory, which, reflecting a set of cultural practices and having developed its own specific terminologies, comes to regard any material, or anything conceived of as material, as appropriate and adequate to the expression of its distinctive and guiding concepts and metaphors. These concepts and metaphors are discussed as already having at their bases strongly visualist biases, the genealogies of which are traced within traditional or formal philosophies. Here, the marginalising tendency of ocularcentrism is exposed, but the very nature and contingency of marginalisation is found to work for the sound artist (where the perpetuation of the mythologised 'outsider' figure is desired) but against sound which is positioned in a purely differential and negative relation. In this epistemological and ontological reduction, sound becomes simply a visual metaphor or metonymic contraction which forecloses the possibility of producing other ways of articulating its experience or of producing any markedly alternative 'readings'. Rather than simply attempting to reverse the hierarchisation of the visual over the aural, or of prefacing sound within a range of artistic practices (each which would keep the negative tradition going) sound's ambiguous relation to the binarism of presence/absence, system and margin, is, however oddly, elaborated. The strategy which attempts to suspend sound primarily within and under the mark of the concept is interrogated and its limits exposed. The sound artist, the 'margin surfer' is revealed as a perhaps deeply conservative figure who may in the end desire the suppression of sound, and who, actually rejecting any destabilising and threatening notion of 'radical alterity' anxiously clings to the 'marginalised' modernist pretence. It is the main contention of this thesis that the marginalisation of sound obscures the more pressing question of its ambiguous relation to notions of sameness and difference, and that its conceptualisation suppresses the question of the ethical. That the ethical question should (and always does) take 'precedence' over purely epistemological and ontological considerations, and that more genuinely open attitudes should be assumed with respect to sound studies are forwarded in this thesis / Master of Arts (Hons)

The question of whether there can be a feminist philosophy of religion must necessarily address the ideas of truth and transcendence, along with their philosophic counterparts, metaphysics and epistemology. In order to answer that question, this work is an examination of the theological philosophic that has grown up around truth and transcendence that is bound and determined by custom, tradition, and fear, consequently manifests itself as unbridled dogmatism that inevitably limits our thinking and understanding. These factors, along with the effects of patriarchy and gender power dynamics found in politics, democracy, and education, serve to create a question of interrelatedness expressed in this work through the relationship between feminism, philosophy, and religion. This project undertakes an examination of those connections to allow us to understand how they create how we think, what we think, and why we think the way we do. This will be done in order to examine the opposite, which will be the primary focus of this study. The main goal is to uncover what these connections limit: ways in which we do not think, ideas which are deemed unsuitable to raise in formative ways, and the structure behind the standard, a standard which inclusive feminist philosophies of religion and theology seem to never meet or exceed. / From feminism we are made aware that what is personal is also political and philosophy provides tools for arriving at clarity in our words and thoughts. All of the ideas discussed herein create the fabric of our lives. We struggle with these ideas, not as compartmentalized entities but as an interwoven fabric that clothes our lives and our thinking. Additionally, we carry with us obligations to one another which emanate from both our rationality and our ability to understand with the heart. Consequently, the question of whether there can be a feminist philosophy of religion becomes a complex interweaving of questions that reach into the very neurosis of truth making, gender identification, and personhood creation. Thinkers discussed include John Dewey, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Daphne Hampson, Pamela Sue Anderson, Grace Jantzen, Catharine MacKinnon, and Simone Weil.

This dissertation provides an account of the aims of rational inquiry with the purpose of explaining the value of truth, information, justification, understanding, and knowledge. I argue that inquirers ought to have two chief and competing goals: to pursue information, and to avoid error. Inquirers ought to want answers that fully satisfy their demands for information, but they should also want those answers to be true. These goals come into conflict, since an agent aiming solely to avoid error could reject any putative information, while an agent aiming solely at pursuing information could accept any putative information regardless of the evidence. Rational inquirers must, then, have some way of balancing their competing aims. I argue that rational inquirers must strike this balance by appealing to the practical reasons for which they are inquiring, which entails that the theory of inquiry has an essential pragmatic element. In pursuing her primary aims an inquirer will need to pursue justification—an account of which is provided—and also ought to be concerned to avoid the luck that is present in Gettier cases. These reflections explain why knowledge has played such a central role in epistemology, since I argue that successful inquiry will result in a form of internalist knowledge.