The goal of this project is to attempt a logical unfolding of one basic idea -that value emerges out of the chaos of energy through natural selection. The goal of the first chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of value. The goal of the second chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of the conception of value. A s a first approximation, it can be said that the first chapter seeks for an objective and the second for a subjective account of the origin of value. There is a paradox in this description, however. The objective gives rise to the subjective, but the subjective then constructs the objective. Objects give rise to subjects, but subjects then construct their objects, and different subjects may construct the world into different objects. This thesis shall attempt to resolve this paradox by describing the course of the emergence of value from the objective into the subjective and then back into the objective, without falling into the vicious circle that results from seeing the world as a juxtaposition of the objective and the subjective. As I hope to show, in the course of the first two chapters, and the ones to follow, the objective and the subjective are idealizations. They are two asymptotes which knowledge approaches but cannot touch. Knowledge ranges between objectivity and subjectivity, without attaining either. Knowledge is knowledge of something and is to that extent objective. Knowledge is knowledge by someone and is to that extent subjective. Because knowledge has an element of subjectivity, it cannot be purely objective. And because knowledge has an element of objectivity, it cannot be purely subjective. The resolution of the juxtaposition between the objective and the subjective, will allow us to describe the emergence of value out of the objective into the subjective and back in terms that do not presuppose either. Subjects arise out of reality that is undivided, and only then divide it into objects in accordance with their constitution, provided to them by undivided reality.

Undergraduates' conceptual knowledge of important concepts in a Pre-historic Archaeology course was investigated with a pre-post open-ended test procedure. Students were randomly assigned to one of three levels of a concept mapping intervention. All students were given an introductory lecture on concept mapping. Of the 124 students who completed the pre- and post-tests, students (n = 45) in the first treatment level were given a reading guide to the textbook material. Students (n = 36) in the second treatment level were given a reading guide with incorporated concept mapping questions. Treatment level three students (n = 43) were also given the concept mapping reading guides and received instructor and peer feedback on their responses to the concept mapping questions. Multivariate statistical analysis revealed that students in all three treatment levels gained in conceptual knowledge. A secondary descriptive analysis revealed that concept mapping appears to aid students in clarifying misconceptions.

Contextual theories of language and experience have been introduced in religious studies at the end of the 1970's to undermine the thesis of a common core in mystical experiences. / A brief review of the essential arguments of W. T. Stace and S. T. Katz is presented. We will then examine how the most consequential attempts to extract intelligible models from the mystics' testimonies have been reflecting, to a large extent, the philosophical assessments of science. We will justify the approach of modern psychology in the general endeavor of erecting an integrated epistemological model of human awareness, since this approach is better positioned to respect both the subjective contribution of the subject and the revised concept of objectivity in empirical methodology. / We will discuss the psychological process known as "cognitive alternation" or "cognitive adaptiveness" and its role in the creative process, and examine how this process reveals the essential structural orientation of consciousness.

The thesis defines and examines a position ('natural anti-realism') which combines an anti-realist semantics with an evolutionary epistemology. An anti-realist semantics, by requiring that a theory of meaning be also a theory of understanding, cries out for an explicit epistemological component. In urging an evolutionary epistemology as such a component, I seek to preserve and underscore the semantic insights of the anti-realist whilst deflecting the common criticism that the anti-realist must perforce embrace some form of noxious idealism. An evolutionary epistemology, I argue, can provide a distinctive content for the belief that reality is independent of human thought without needing to claim that anything we can say or think about the world can be conceived as being true or false in full independence of our capacity to know it as such. This content is to be secured in two ways. The first is to observe that language is best understood as a tool of minds which are themselves best understood as the products of a natural process operating in an independently real world. The second is to form a non-transcendent conception of transcendent facts. The accessible evidence concerning the form of the selective process, it is argued, warrants the claim that reality may exceed its humanly accessible contours. For it warrants the claim that man is probably cognitively limited and biased in ways rooted in our peculiar, and somewhat contingent, evolutionary past. The natural anti-realist thus conceives of reality as both independent of, and potentially transcending the limits of, man's particular mental orientation. A largely realistic metaphysics may thus accompany an anti-realist semantics without the lapse into vacuity or incoherence which some commentators seem to fear.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1986. / Bibliography: leaves 224-229. / Photocopy. / Microfiche. / ix, 229 leaves, bound 29 cm

It is orthodoxy in contemporary philosophy of cognitive science to hold that the human brain processes information, both about the body in which the brain is located and about the world more generally. The internal states of the brain that encode this information are known as mental representations. Two matters concerning mental representation are interwoven here: the role of representational content in cognition and the format of mental representation. Robert Cummins, among others, argues that content is intrinsic to mental representation, rather than involving matters external to a representation, such as the use to which the representation is put. He also holds that resemblance accounts of representation best make sense of this fact. Thus, according to Cummins, the content of a mental representation is determined by its form. This thesis argues that an account of representation requiring that representations possess resembling structure is unlikely to be correct given (a) the minimal requirements that something must meet in order to count as a mental representation, (b) the tasks required of representation in cognition, such as capturing abstract properties, combining with other representations, and tracking change, and (c) the possibility that content stands in a different relation to form and cognition from the one Cummins has in mind. In criticising Cummins, however, this thesis explores possible implementations of resemblance theories in connectionist representation. It also redraws his map of the psychosemantic field to suggest that classical theories of cognition, which posit concatenative schemes of symbolic representation, share some of the benefits of tying content to orm. Finally, in exploring various notions of the role of form in representation, this thesis also advocates a pluralistic approach to the mental representations implicated in human cognition. / Thesis (M.A.)--School of Humanities, 2004.

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 1987. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [161]-164).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-114).

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title screen. Melissa M. Merritt, committee chair; Jessica Berry, Sebastian Rand, committee members. Electronic text (81 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Nov. 9, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-81).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 206-224).