This dissertation explores Kant’s theory of perceptual experience. A reconstruction of Kant’s conception of perceptual synthesis is pursued through an examination of two interpretations given by Wilfrid Sellars and John McDowell. The two interpretations defended by Sellars and McDowell emphasize on the conceptual synthesis of the understanding in shaping the sensory consciousness. Also, the two interpretations seek to articulate a conception of external constraint in perceptual activity that is answerable to independent reality. The external constraint is necessary to explain the occurrence of perceptual experience. The manifold of sense is considered as an external constraint in perceptual synthesis. Sellars takes sheer receptivity as providing this constraining element in perceptual experience, whereas McDowell argues that sensations as informed by the understanding can sufficiently provide this constraining content. After examining both interpretations, I will argue that Sellars and McDowell incorrectly take external constraint as appropriated by the concepts of the understanding. To defend this claim, I will reconstruct Kant’s conception of perceptual experience by demonstrating that Kant posits the manifold of sensations as independent of the operation of the understanding. The manifold of sensations constrains the conceptual content of experience through the synthesis of apprehension. In this synthesis, the manifold of sensations resists the figurative synthesis of imagination from being re-constituted through the extensive forms of space and time.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 332 p. Includes bibliographical references.

The economy and population of McDowell County, West Virginia, drastically decreased between 1950 and 1970. The increased reliance of the coal industry, McDowell County's primary industry, on labor saving machinery resulted in a loss of employment opportunities. This study seeks to investigate the reasons for the reliance on coal and the results of the mechanization movement in the coal industry on McDowell County. Using production and employment data of two representative McDowell County coal companies, it is clear that the introduction of continuous mining machines, which combined the cutting and loading of coal into one step, allowed companies to mine more coal with fewer workers. Because the economy of McDowell County was so coal-intensive, the increased unemployment caused by mechanization forced many miners to migrate to such midwestern industrial centers as Cleveland or Columbus.

Thesis (M. A.)--Trinity International University, 2008. / Abstract. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-136).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-156).

Thesis (M.Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-156) Also available in print.

A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts / The Epistemological Realist (ER)project, recently initiated by John McDowell in Mind and World and Hilary Putnam in his 1994 series of Dewey Lectures, is an extremely promising one. This project aims to show how a 'commonsense realism' about the world and our relationship to it can be made tenable in a philosophical climate increasingly dominated by various forms of anti-realism. At least part of the reason for the prevalence of anti-realism is the unsatisfactory way in which realism has traditionally been developed. Epistemological Realism departs from Traditional Realism in at least three key areas: (a) its account of how perception enables empirical knowledge, (b) its account of perception itself and (c) its account of how our empirical knowledge claims bear on reality. The ability of the ER theorist to give perfectly satisfactory accounts of (a)-(c) does much to reinstate 'commonsense realism' as a philosophically respectable position. Epistemological Realism 'commonsense realism' Traditional Realism antirealism perception empirical knowledge reality John McDowell Mind and World Hilary Putnam / AC2017

The WET-Temp (Watershed Evaluation Tool Temperature) model is designed to take advantage of spatially explicit datasets to predict stream temperature distribution. Datasets describing vegetation cover, stream network locations, elevation and stream discharge are utilized by WET-Temp to quantify geometric relationships between the sun, stream channel and riparian areas. These relationships are used to estimate the energy gained or lost by the stream via various heat flux processes (solar and longwave radiation, evaporation, convection and advection). The sum of these processes is expressed as a differential energy balance equation applied at discrete locations across the stream network. The model describes diurnal temperature dynamics at each of these locations and thus temperature distribution across the entire network. WET-Temp is calibrated to a tributary of the South Santiam River in western Oregon, McDowell Creek. The mean differences between measured and modeled values in McDowell Creek were 0.6��C for daily maximum temperature and 1.3��C for daily minimum temperature. The model was then used to predict maximum and minimum temperatures in an adjacent tributary, Hamilton Creek. The mean differences between modeled and measured values in this paired basin were 1.8��C for daily maximum temperatures and 1.4��C for daily minimum temperatures. Influences of model parameters on modeled temperature distributions are explored in a sensitivity analysis. The ability of WET-Temp to utilize spatially explicit datasets in estimating temperature distributions across stream networks advances the state of the art in modeling stream temperature. / Graduation date: 2003

In this paper I argue, with many leading commentators, that Kant is a conceptualist. I support this conclusion, argued for independently by Hannah Ginsborg and John McDowell, by appeal to the analyticity of Kant’s apperception principle in the transcendental deduction. I argue that the apperception principle, if taken as an analytic proposition, implies that any mental representation that figures into discursive cognition is the product of a priori synthesis. I further argue that making a priori synthesis a condition for the possibility of any mental representation is sufficient to make mental representation conceptual in the relevant sense. This, I argue, strongly suggests that Kant is a conceptualist.

This project offers an articulation of rationality in terms of normativity—that what it means to be acting rationally, in thought or in deed, can be understood via a notion of being bound or obliged to certain behaviors given a prior structure that delimits what is rational to assert in a discourse or perform in a society. In the explicit articulation of the role of norms in limning rationality, this project also emphasizes the opportunity and obligation to self-critically assess the value of the metalinguistic and metapractical standards that license rational assertions and behaviors. After an introduction, section 2 examines the role of rational constraint in Kant’s account of representation, concluding that the transcendental story his philosophy leaves us with impels us to look for an immanent socio-linguistic account of the normativity that obliges us to think and behave in certain ways, rather than lodging the force of normativity in transcendentality. Section 3 then examines Robert Brandom’s inferential semantics by addressing prominent responses to Brandom’s program, making explicit two ways in which normativity operates in inferentialism—one at the level of objectlanguage in the articulation of the propositional commitments and entitlements that specify propositional content, the other at the level of the metalinguistic appraisal of the standards that drive object-language inferentialism. Section 4 turns to the theoretical status of normativity and its role in practical behavior, where it is argued that a notion of normativity can underpin a theory of intentional states. Examining positions on naturalism, the author proposes that a causal account of intentionality, made explicit by the prescriptive nature of the theory advanced, provides a naturalist view of normativity for which norms are in explanations of social states as laws are in explanations of physical states. Hence the obligation to self-critically reflect on and revise the norms that delimit ethical behavior in social systems is understood as commensurate with the obligation to self-critically reflect on and revise the norms that delimit warranted assertions in epistemic discourse. The conclusion offers some remarks on the prospects for rational revision in both a discipline’s discourse and a society’s standards of behavior.