Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2010. / Adviser: Nicholas Wuehrmann. Includes bibliographical references (p. 70).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-153).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-153).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-153).

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Communications, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-69).

The problem with which this study is concerned is that of critically analyzing and producing the musical comedy The Apple Tree. The study attempts to adapt some of the major unifying elements of this production and, in addition, unite the show through the use of color. The study also attempts to update the production through an extension of symbolism based on the style of Peter Max; to produce a major musical comedy in a stylized and symbolic style, and to show how a stylized and symbolic method of production can be used to achieve simplicity and unity within the confines of a limited budget.

Jerry Fodor has argued that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. I argue against this position, but not, as other have done, on the grounds that the arguments against lexical decomposition upon which Fodor relies are flawed. Rather, I argue that even if lexical concepts cannot be decomposed, the possession conditions for having lexical concepts are nonetheless not innately satisfied.

Thesis (M.S.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2006. / Thesis advisor: C. Charles Mate-Kole. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in International Studies. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-74). Also available via the World Wide Web.

In this thesis I address certain key issues in contemporary philosophy of mind and psychology via a study of Jerry Fodor's hugely important contributions to the discussion of those issues. The issues in question are: (i) the nature of scientific psychology; (ii) the individuation of psychological states for the purposes of scientific psychological explanation; and (iii) the project of naturalising mental content. I criticise many of Fodor's most significant and provocative claims but from within a framework of shared assumptions. I attempt to motivate and justify many of these shared assumptions. Chapter 1 constitutes an overview of the key themes in Fodor's philosophy of mind. In Chapter 2 an account of scientific psychology within the orthodox computationalist tradition is developed according to which that discipline is concerned with explaining intentionally characterised cognitive capacities. Such explanations attribute both semantic and syntactic properties to subpersonal representational states and processes. In Chapters 3 and 5 Fodor's various arguments for the conclusion that scientific psychology does (or should) individuate psychological states individualistically are criticised. I argue that there are pragmatic reasons why scientific psychology should sometimes attribute contents that are not locally supervenient. In Chapter 4 I consider Marr's theory of vision and conclude that the contents that Marr attributes to the states of the visual module are locally supervenient. Inconsistency is avoided by stressing the continuity of scientific psychological content with folk psychological content. In Chapter 6 I develop an account of the project of naturalising mental content that vindicates that project. In Chapter 7 I address the question of whether Fodor's theory of content constitutes a successful engagement in that project. I argue for a negative answer before drawing some morals as to how we should proceed in the light of the failure of Fodor's theory.

According to Suls' (1972) incongruity model for the appreciation of jokes, humor with which recipients are familiar should not be perceived as funny because the ending is predictable. Suls (1975) later proposed that familiar humor is appreciated because of the sense of competence derived from adequately remembering the joke. This study examined Suls' theories by having subjects rate jokes on two occasions and supply their punch lines on the second occasion. Statistical significance was determined through the use of the t test for correlated means. Jokes for which punch lines were recalled were perceived as significantly less funny than on the first occasion. The results did not support predictions made from Suls' competence theory but did support those derived from Suls' incongruity model.