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A prevailing scholarly view holds that John Milton’s monism (his belief that matter and spirit are inseparable) is a reaction to seventeenth-century determinism. My thesis, however, posits that Milton’s monism in fact emerges from his exploration of literary form. Chapter one traces the classical roots of the philosophy and its compatibility with Genesis. It posits the comprehensiveness of monist philosophy and highlights the vitalist (or animate) implications of ancient monist theories for literary form. Spoken or written words, Democritus suggests, correspond to the material building blocks or “elements” of the universe: the construction of literary form is analogous to the creation of the cosmos. Indeed, Lucretius’ letter-atom analogy suggests that the process of creating literary form is essentially identical to the atomic method underlying the composition of other material forms in the universe. Greek atomist thought, the chapter proposes, finds a striking parallel in Jewish mystical beliefs about creation. It is with the letters of the divine name that the Lord was said to have created the universe. I argue that, for Milton, Aristotle is most influential in expressing a vitalist conception of literary form, for in his philosophy, soul generates voice, which manifests itself in writing. Milton acknowledges the association between words and atoms, between letters and primordial substance, and between voice, or breath, and spirit in his monist materialism; after all, in Genesis, God creates by utterance. Examining the relation of vitalism to Aristotelian poetics, I suggest the relevance of the concept to Milton’s hybrid literary forms. Then, analysing the material nature of voice in Milton’s works, I posit in chapter two that Milton’s polemical pamphlets underscore the sense of spirit in writing that we find in the poetry. That literary forms can be perceived to embody soul because they evoke voice is evident also from Milton’s Art of Logic (1672). I suggest in chapter three that Logic is saturated with materialism because the Aristotelian sources on which Milton’s Ramist logic is based express material monism. Milton’s Logic and Areopagitica (1644) provide further evidence of his thinking about the vital potential of literary form through the logical construction of texts, a continued interest, I argue, which ultimately engenders his mature monism. Milton use of dream narratives in Paradise Lost, I propose, suggests that reality varies materially by degrees. The parts that reality comprises become more distinct after the Fall, when Milton’s dream narratives, and his cosmology, changes. Before the Fall, the poet imagines that Earth orbits the sun, and that the sun orbits heaven at the centre of the cosmos, a formation, I explain, that has striking resemblance to modern knowledge of the solar system. With careful attention to the dreams of Paradise Lost, I have determined that monism, for Milton, encompasses the workings of intellect, and in the final chapter, I argue that this principle is central to understanding Paradise Regained. The Son’s method of survival in the wilderness becomes the means by which paradise (the spiritual reality) is regained. Understanding his own nature permits the Son of God physiologically to sustain himself through dreaming; the intellectual achievement alters the material nature of his body so that he is sustained by spiritual food. Monism is at the very heart of Paradise Regained. It is a monist methodology of literary form which enables the poet across his oeuvre truly to represent the nature of reality.

<p>Denna uppsats analyserar den medvetandefilosofiska debatten mellan Donald Davidson och Jaegwon Kim rörande Davidsons tes om det mentalas superveniens på det fysiska. Tesen utgör ett element i Davidsons generella teori om relationen mellan det mentala och det fysiska; anomal monism. Författaren frågar sig om Kim har rätt i att tesen om mental superveniens inte är tillräcklig för att garantera det mentala kausal kraft. I uppsatsen analyseras de båda filosofernas ståndpunkter i debatten med speciell tonvikt på deras respektive definitioner av superveniensbegreppet. Med utgångspunkt i detta argumenterar författarinnan att Kim i viss utsträckning kan sägas ha missförstått Davidsons superveniens-begrepp. Kim har definierat "svag" respektive "stark" och velat tolka Davidsons superveniens som tillhörande den sistnämnda sorten. Uppsatsförfattaren intar en ståndpunkt motsatt Kims och menar att Davidsons superveniensbegrepp snarare bör förstås som en variant av svag superveniens, men konstaterar samtidigt att det inte är helt säkert att dennes superveniens alls kan inordnas i någon av dessa kategorier; dessa refererar till "möjliga världar", vilka Davidson vägrar acceptera.</p> / <p>This paper analyses the debate between Donald Davidson and Jaegwon Kim concerning Davidsons idea of the supervenience of the mental upon the physical. This thought is part of Davidson's general theory of the relation between mind and body; anomalous monism. The author asks wherther Kim is right that mental supervenience is insufficient to gurantee the mental causal power. The paper analyses the standpoints of both philosophers, especially regarding their definitions of "supervenience" and argues that Kim, to some extent, can be said to have misunderstood Davidson's notion of supervenience. Kim has offered definitons of "weak" and "strong" supervenience and interpreted Davidsons supervenience as being of the kind last mentioned. The author takes a standpoint opposite of Kim's and argues that Davidson's notion of supervenience is better understood as weak supervenience, but at the same time notes that it is by no means obvious that Davidsons supervenience can be said to belong to either of these categories since these refer to "possible worlds", which Davidson refuses to accept.</p>

Faith for Milton is primarily a matter of man's access to God. Such access entails God's involvement in mankind. Faith is that which guarantees that God is accessible to men and also that God actively participates in the lives of his people. Milton's work exhibits a preoccupation with such a concept of faith, and wavers through the course of his life between dualist and monist formulations. Monistic faith suggests that God is directly accessible to man, while dualistic faith means that God may only be accessible in a mediated way. In the course of his career, Milton proceeded from an early dualistic faith to the declared monism of De Doctrina Christiana. This thesis examines the monistic impulse within Milton's poetry, focusing on the poems written during his mid-career (c. 1637-1653) when his outlook on faith turned. The thesis finds that although Milton expresses his monism in increasingly clear terms, he is never quite able to eliminate dualistic implications or tendencies from his faith. The thesis focuses on two strategies which Milton employs in his attempts to define a monistic world view and a monistic faith, namely, tradition and translation. These strategies represent points of confrontation between dualism and monism. They both assert monistic continuity in the face of dualist disjunction. Tradition attempts to overcome the disjunction perceptible between two remote events in time. It incorporates both the recovery of lost history as well as geographical and linguistic translation. Translation (taken as separate from tradition) attempts to overcome the disjunction between languages. It manages, however unsuccessfully, to carry meaning over from a source text to a target text while simultaneously altering every single word in the source text. Both these strategies thus provide textual and linguistic means for examining Milton's faith or his sense of divine access. This thesis examines Milton's deployment of tradition by means of a close consideration of Lycidas as well as several other early poems. It examines his 1648 and 1653 psalm translations and the unique manner in which they reveal Milton's understanding of faith. The thesis concludes that Milton's monistic faith never quite breaks free of the dualist tendencies against which it struggles.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Vanderbilt University, 1937. / Without thesis note. "A critical examination of Dr. Macintosh's system."--P. [1].

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Vanderbilt University, 1937. / Without thesis note. "A critical examination of Dr. Macintosh's system."--P. [1].

Denna uppsats analyserar den medvetandefilosofiska debatten mellan Donald Davidson och Jaegwon Kim rörande Davidsons tes om det mentalas superveniens på det fysiska. Tesen utgör ett element i Davidsons generella teori om relationen mellan det mentala och det fysiska; anomal monism. Författaren frågar sig om Kim har rätt i att tesen om mental superveniens inte är tillräcklig för att garantera det mentala kausal kraft. I uppsatsen analyseras de båda filosofernas ståndpunkter i debatten med speciell tonvikt på deras respektive definitioner av superveniensbegreppet. Med utgångspunkt i detta argumenterar författarinnan att Kim i viss utsträckning kan sägas ha missförstått Davidsons superveniens-begrepp. Kim har definierat "svag" respektive "stark" och velat tolka Davidsons superveniens som tillhörande den sistnämnda sorten. Uppsatsförfattaren intar en ståndpunkt motsatt Kims och menar att Davidsons superveniensbegrepp snarare bör förstås som en variant av svag superveniens, men konstaterar samtidigt att det inte är helt säkert att dennes superveniens alls kan inordnas i någon av dessa kategorier; dessa refererar till "möjliga världar", vilka Davidson vägrar acceptera. / This paper analyses the debate between Donald Davidson and Jaegwon Kim concerning Davidsons idea of the supervenience of the mental upon the physical. This thought is part of Davidson's general theory of the relation between mind and body; anomalous monism. The author asks wherther Kim is right that mental supervenience is insufficient to gurantee the mental causal power. The paper analyses the standpoints of both philosophers, especially regarding their definitions of "supervenience" and argues that Kim, to some extent, can be said to have misunderstood Davidson's notion of supervenience. Kim has offered definitons of "weak" and "strong" supervenience and interpreted Davidsons supervenience as being of the kind last mentioned. The author takes a standpoint opposite of Kim's and argues that Davidson's notion of supervenience is better understood as weak supervenience, but at the same time notes that it is by no means obvious that Davidsons supervenience can be said to belong to either of these categories since these refer to "possible worlds", which Davidson refuses to accept.

In this paper I argue that Velmens’ reflexive model of perceptual consciousness is useful for understanding the first-person perspective and sentience in animals. I then offer a defense of the proposal that ray-finned bony fish have a first-person perspective and sentience. This defense has two prongs. The first prong is presence of a substantial body of evidence that the neuroanatomy of the fish brain exhibits basic organizational principles associated with consciousness in mammals. These principles include a relationship between a second-order sensory relay, the preglomerular complex, and the fish pallium which bears a resemblance to the relationship between the mammalian thalamus and the neocortex, the existence of feedback/feedforward and reentrant circuitry in the pallium, and structural and functional differences among divisions of the fish pallium. The second prong is the existence of behaviors in fish that exhibit significant flexibility in the presence of environmental change and require relational learning among stimuli distributed in space, over time, or both. I conclude that, although they are instantiated differently, a first-person perspective and sentience are present in fish.

In my thesis, I will argue that while at first glance Spinoza's system seems to conflict with itself and provide an explanation of the mind that can be more confusing than helpful, its aspect of panpsychism provides a sort of lifeline for understanding. Not only does Spinoza's cosmopsychism make his system cohesive, but it can also be independently motivated by ideas that are compatible with the more contemporary intuitions in philosophy of mind. I will explore the specific nature of this universal mentality, how Spinoza's particular genre of panpsychism relates to other theories of panpsychism, and how his conception of omnipresent mind affects our understanding of consciousness and its place in the world.