As computing technology has become a vital part of everyday life, studies have increasingly scrutinized the underlying meaning of computational things. As different devices become interwoven with daily practices and routines, there is a growing interest in understanding not only their functional meaning in computational terms but also their meaning in relation to other non-computation artefacts. This thesis investigates how people relate to artefacts and how their individual values and attitudes affect this relationship.  The analysis is based on four ethnographic studies, which look at the richness of ordinary interactions with technology to understand the impact of technology upon practice and experience. The process through which humans develop a relationship to artefacts is framed as a continuous series of encounters, through which the individual constantly reshapes their relationship to things.  Artefacts are seen as lines in the mesh of everyday life, and the encounters are the intersections between lines. This approach–grounded in phenomenology and paired with an anthropological understanding of everyday life–reconceptualises understanding of the processes of adaption, meaning-making, disposing and recycling. The work reveals how human relations to all kinds of things–in the form of meaning–is continually transforming. Core to this understanding is the cultural relative essence that becomes perceived of the artefacts themselves. This essence deeply affects the way we encounter and thus interact with technology, as well as objects more broadly. In the daily interaction with computing devices we can observe that computing technology alters the mesh on a different level than non-computational artefacts: digital interfaces pull our lines together, bundle experiences an affect how we encounter the material and the social world. This enables computing devices to have meanings distinct from non-computing technology. To go further, computing is itself a mode of existence – a crucial difference in things that helps us understand the complexity of the material world.

Purposes/Aims: This study described the unique relationships that develop while providing cancer care to American Indian (AI) populations and the underlying meaning that nurses ascribed to these experiences. Rationale/Conceptual Basis/Background: The establishment of caring relationships in order to provide high quality cancer care is particularly challenging for nurses who engage with ethnic minority populations as they contend with cultural and contextual influences different from those found in the majority population. AIs represent an Indigenous minority group in the U.S. facing a considerable cancer care inequity. Nurses who care for AI patients frequently encounter population-specific issues that impact the caring dynamic, yet their experiences and the meaning they ascribe to them are largely unknown. Methods: This was an interpretive phenomenological study with iterative data collection and analysis. Nine cancer care nurses with a minimum of three years of experience working with AI patients participated by engaging in 2-3 exploratory, open-ended, reflective interviews over a period of 9 months. Thematic reduction was completed to explicate the fundamental structures of nurse-patient relationships during cancer care. Phenomenological and hermeneutical reflective writing resulted in linguistic transformation illuminating the essential meaning for nurses within this patient-nurse phenomenon. Results: Findings include individually-situated wholistic descriptions capturing the existential experiences of each of the participants. Reduction of individually-situated themes into seven shared meta-themes included From Task to Connection; Unnerving Messaging; We Are One; the Freedom of Unconditional Acceptance; Attuning and Opening; Atoning for the Past, One Moment at a Time; and Humanizing the Inhumane. Themes were explicated in a comprehensive general structural description followed by the reconstitution of the data and self-reflection into a deeply introspective essential description, suggesting that the meaning of the AI patient-cancer care nurse relationship was expressed in contradictory yet simultaneous patterns of joy and sorrow; ease and difficulty; obligation and vocation. From one moment to the next, nurses sought synchronicity with their patient as they danced to a life rhythm that revealed and concealed; enabled and limited; connected and separated. Being in relationship provided nurses great purpose within the universal human context of caring. Implications: Results contribute to the development of interventions designed to improve both the AI cancer care experience and the support and training of the nurses who serve this population. Refinement of our praxis will result in improved outcomes for both nurses and AI patients, reflecting the inseparability of the two entities within the cancer care relationship. The complimentary and mutually dependent nature of the patient-nurse relationship implies that strengthening and improving support for one entity may in turn positively impact the other. Further research into the AI patient’s perspective of their relationships with cancer care nurses is called for.

The purpose of the study was to explore juvenile offenders' perceptions of the counseling relationship. Eight juvenile offenders who were on probation under the jurisdiction of a juvenile court participated in the study. Using a phenomenological methodology, two interviews with each participant were conducted in order to obtain participants' full descriptions of the phenomenon of the counseling relationship. The main research question was: What are juvenile offenders' perceptions of the counseling relationship? Sub-questions were: (a) What are the themes and qualities that account for how feelings and thoughts connected to the counseling relationship are aroused?, (b) What are the underlying conditions that account for juvenile offenders' perceptions of the counseling relationship?, (c) What are the universal structures (e.g. time, space, bodily concerns, physical substance, causality, relation to self or others ) that precipitate feelings and thoughts about the experience of the counseling relationship?, and (d) What are the unique qualities of the experience that facilitate a description of the "counseling relationship" as it is experienced by juvenile offenders? Participants' descriptions provided a range of descriptions that were summarized in three thematic categories: Themes Related to Participants, Themes Related to Counselors, and Themes Related to the Process of Counseling Relationships. In addition, a composite textural-structural description of participants' experiences provided a holistic description of the phenomenon as lived by participants. Participants' experiences provided a greater depth of understanding of the counseling relationship with this challenging population from the perspective of juvenile offenders. Implications for juvenile offender counselors and counselor educators are discussed. Implications for phenomenological methodology are also discussed.

Thesis advisor: Patrick H. Byrne / It has been held in philosophical practice that some matters of reflection have more import than others, and that some are so significant that they may be termed "first philosophy." In contemporary Continental philosophy, the term "event" has become a watchword for a profound change in the orientation of philosophic thought. Indeed, one may say that the discourse surrounding events marks the first decisive development in philosophy since Martin Heidegger penned Being and Time. This is not to say, however, that any consensus has emerged concerning either the character of events, or more importantly what they entail for the meaning of human historical consciousness. To provide such statements, ones that have at least a relative superiority with respect to their rivals, might thus be considered the basic task for first philosophy today. It is to accomplish this double aim that the present work is devoted. These two tasks, articulating the character of events and their significance for human historical consciousness, are here assayed by a movement that is itself double, by a movement of suspicion and affirmation. In the specific case, the present work undertakes a retrieval of Heidegger's understanding of "Ereignis" (or event) after passing through a hermeneutics of suspicion, posed by the criticisms of the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou, and returning to an articulation of "Emergence" as a complementary hermeneutics of affirmation. The method by which I undertake this inquiry is what may be called an "infinite hermeneutics," which I intend to be opposed to "finite hermeneutics." By this latter program, "finite hermeneutics," I mean any form of philosophical hermeneutics that is committed to the thesis that human understanding (Verstehen) is finite, or that the objective of inquiry itself is finite, or both of these points. The thesis that human understanding is finite may be found in Kant's proposal that human knowing is distinct from divine knowledge in the respect that human knowing is dependent on receptive intuition, and thus finite, while infinite knowledge is founded on a productive intuition. In the relevant sense, I argue, it may also be found in Heidegger's own thought. One of the major points of the present investigation is to demonstrate in what way a commitment to finitude is highly problematic, and that human knowing, human comprehension, and even the very character of what is known is not finite in any relevant sense. The motivation for such a departure is provided by the criticisms of Badiou, which are here treated as a moment of suspicion. I begin the work with a "Prolegomenon," which reviews in detail the specific challenge Badiou has posed for phenomenological hermeneutics, or any other philosophical position that is committed to the notion that human thought or understanding is finite. As a "Prolegomenon," however, nothing positive for my own position is accomplished there; instead the net result of the study is to produce: (a) an argument against Heideggerian finite hermeneutics, (b) a summary critique of the Badiou's own position, and (c) a clear statement on the eight separate tasks that I set out to accomplish in the argument that follows. The positive aspect of the text, the beginning of the movement of affirmation, thus occurs in "Part I: Infinite Hermeneutics," in which I present a defense of phenomenological hermeneutics as a viable philosophical method. In chapter three I begin by drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur. My argument is that he is both the very first philosopher to articulate an infinite hermeneutics, and that this account, suitably elaborated throughout his career, is able to meet most of the specific challenges Badiou poses. There does remain, however, three separate points that Ricoeur's thought does not fully explore. In order to remedy those deficiencies, and in order to demonstrate the relative advantage of my hermeneutical position with respect to its competitors, I thus move to produce a new model for hermeneutical thought. Articulating the conditions for this model is the task for chapter four. My task here resolves into three parts. First, I argue for a Galoisian Revolution in phenomenological study, which sets forth a new between hermeneutics and phenomenology study. This relation, second, requires a rearticulation of phenomenological method such that it is "impersonal," as Jean-Paul Sartre's early work suggests. Additionally this relation, third, requires that one be attentive to the structures of consciousness, which is what completes the Galoisian Revolution. In order to support my account of an impersonal phenomenology I engage the contemporary Anglo-American discussions in the philosophy of mind concerning the character of first-person consciousness. In order to specify what is intended by a structure of first-person consciousness, provide a provisional phenomenology of eros. In chapter five I move to articulate the structure of consciousness that serves as the third model for phenomenological hermeneutics. It is at this point that I engage with the work of Bernard Lonergan. My central contention in chapter five is that it is possible to retrieve Longergan's work on cognitional structure as a phenomenology of inquiry for hermeneutical purposes. Taken together, these points, the Ricoeurean defense of hermeneutics, the development of an impersonal phenomenology, and the retrieval of a phenomenology of inquiry, form the hard core of my proposal for infinite hermeneutics. "Part II: On Worlds" concerns the fruits that I can reap from the harvest sown in Part I. In particular, I aim to develop an ecological sense of worlds in response to Badiou's category-theoretic and Heidegger's (early) existential world. My argument moves from an ecological account of natural worlds (chapter six), through a signifying account human worlds (chapter seven), to an account of human historical consciousness and a consideration of catastrophes such as the Shoah and the Encounter (chapter eight). In each of these chapters I focus on developing an account of different kinds of Events, with the aim not only of providing a more serviceable account than my rivals, but also with the hopes of providing a new and better picture of world process. The final section, "Part III: The Metaphysics of Excess" expresses the central Metaphysical claims of the work, especially those concerning Events and the peculiar form I call Emergence. This chapter, in short, constitutes the moment of affirmation in response to the moment of suspicion occasioned by Badiou's criticism of phenomenological hermeneutics. Additionally, however, I produce an argument for the intelligible relation of cosmic space and time with human (lived) space and time, a statement on the new forms of causation entailed by the possibility of Events, and a new account of Truth (to rival Badiou and Heidegger's). The work closes with a summary review of what I have achieved and what yet remains to be accomplished. Though as the title of the conclusion suggests, its main aim is to provide a new statement on the world-view that I work to articulate over the course of the investigation. That world-view, and this is the justification for the subtitle of the present work, is the trans-modern condition, which articulates the existential character of our modern globalized world. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: John Sallis / This dissertation investigates the importance of the imagination in the thought of F.W. J. Schelling and Martin Heidegger, and argues that Heidegger's later philosophy cannot be understood properly without appreciating Schelling's central importance for him. It is increasingly recognized today that Schelling, who had long been overlooked, is an important figure in post-Kantian German Idealism. However, his significance for Heidegger's concentration on the creative character of thought remains undervalued. I argue that, by tracing the theme of imagination in these thinkers, the milieu of Schelling's absolute idealism and that of Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenlogy may be understood as distinct discourses that nevertheless share in a profound impulse to overcome sensible-intelligible and subject-object dualisms and retrieve and refine the productive and projective character of reason. This impulse is first evident in both thinkers' attention to the role of imagination in Kant's critical project (for Schelling, cir. 1800; for Heidegger, cir. 1929). It then proves inseparable from Schelling's treatments of intuition, identity, ground, and freedom; and it becomes still more evident in Heidegger's 1936 lecture course on Schelling and his affiliated inquiries into the essence of art and poetry. Even as Heidegger labors to deconstruct the alleged visual and subjectivist bias of metaphysics, he remains preoccupied with Schelling's ontological treatment of the law of identity and intent on translating Schelling's aesthetic emphasis into a poetic paradigm for philosophical inquiry. By focusing on how, alongside his engagement with Schelling, Heidegger endeavors to recover the imagination as a poetic (as opposed to reductive and willful) basis for reason, we attain a decisive rubric for understanding his later thought / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Syftet med studien är att ur ett elevperspektiv undersöka orsaker till att elever får en problematisk frånvaro och avser att fokusera på att belysa vilka faktorer i skolan som beskrivs orsaka denna. Studiens frågeställningar är: Vad beskriver elever med problematisk skolfrånvaro som orsaken till att de har hög frånvaro? samt Vilka skolrelaterade faktorer kan kopplas till elevernas beskrivningar? Den teoretiska ansats som används i studien är fenomenologi. Studien är kvalitativ och sju halvstrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts och induktiv kvalitetinnehålls analys har använts som metod för analysen av materialet. Resultaten visar sex teman med faktorer som enligt eleverna leder till problematisk skolfrånvaro: Relationer, Psykisk ohälsa, Trötthet, Stress, Svårigheter i undervisningssituationen och Sjukdom. Resultatet visar att dåliga relationer till lärare eller elever leder till ökad frånvaro, medan goda relationer med elever kan leda antingen till ökad eller minskad frånvaro. Den psykiska ohälsan som beskrivs leda till frånvaro är depression, ångest och panikångest. Flera elever anger att de är mycket trötta och att de därför inte orkar med skolarbetet eller vänner. Tröttheten kan bland annat göra att eleven inte kommer upp på morgonen eller att den får svårt att hantera till exempel irritation och ilska. Den stress som kan hindra eleverna i studien från att vara närvarande kan bero på att de har många uppgifter, men framförallt att de hamnar efter när de är frånvarande. Många människor, hög ljudnivå och blickar från andra elever är också något som kan skapa stort stresspåslag. Även vissa undervisningssituationer beskrivs påverka elevens närvaro såsom brist på struktur, att eleven inte förstår undervisningen, elever som stör samt ombytessituation och prestationskulturen på idrottslektionerna. Slutligen kan vi se att sjukdom eller skada kan leda till att elever blir frånvarande under längre perioder. / The purpose of this study is to investigate, from a pupil's perspective, reasons why students have a problematic absence and intends to focus on highlighting what factors in the school are described causing this. The questions of the study is: What do students with problematic schoolabsenteeism describe as the reason why they have a high absence? and Which school-related factors can be linked to the students' descriptions? A phenomenologic perspective has been used as a theoretical framework. This is a qualitative study and seven semi-structured interviews are conducted and as a method of analysis a qualitative content analysis with an inductive approach was used. The empirical data was categorized into six themes with factors that, according to the students, are the reasons why they have a high absence: Relationships, Mental illness, Fatigue, Stress, Difficulty in the teaching situation and Illness. The result shows that bad relationships with teachers or students leads to increased absence, while good relationships with other students can lead to either increased or decreased absence. The mental illness described as leading to absence is depression, anxiety and panicdisorder. Several students state that they are very tired and that they therefore cannot cope with schoolwork or friends. The fatigue can, among other things, contribute to the student not coming up in the morning or that it gets difficult to handle for example irritation and anger. The stress that can impede the students in the study from being present may be that they have many tasks, but above all that they fall behind when they are absent. Lots of people, high noiselevels and gazings from other students are also something that can create a big stressboost. Some teachingsituations are also described affecting the students attendance such as a lack of structure, that the student doesn´t understand the teaching, students who are disturbing and the exchangesituation together with the performanceculture of the PE. Finally, we can see that illness or injury can cause students to be absent for longer periods.

O presente estudo aborda a amputação desde o momento em que passa a fazer parte das inquietações da autora, integrando seu mundo-vida, por meio de interrogações relativas à questão da amputação, suas implicações e sentimentos experimentados pela pessoa que a vivencia. Constitui-se numa investigação de caráter qualitativo, desenvolvida à luz do referencial teórico-metodológico da fenomenologia e que busca compreender, então, a vivência de uma amputação, a partir da visão da pessoa que a experiencia. Inicialmente, a fim de compreender o fenômeno que se mostra diante de meus olhos, pedindo um aclaramento, realizei um levantamento bibliográfico, o que me possibilitou conhecer a amputação sob vários enfoques, além de permitir a apropriação de algumas idéias do pensamento filosófico de Merleau-Ponty, abordando a percepção, o corpo que percebe e é percebido, na sua relação com o mundo, e o enraizamento do espírito neste corpo. Após conhecer a amputação, sob o ponto de vista literário, busquei o seu compartilhar com a pessoa a ela submetida, habitando seu mundo. Compartilhando desse momento, pude compreender seu sentido e seus significados, expressando-os sob a forma de categorias temáticas. Desta forma, foi possível desvelar algumas facetas do fenômeno amputação, além de compreender a pessoa amputada e a amputação tal como ela se mostra em si mesma. / This study addresses amputation as from the moment when it became part of the author’s concerns, integrating her world and her life, through inquiries concerning the issue of amputation, its implications and the feelings of those who experience it. It is a qualitative investigation, conducted in the light of the theoretical and methodological framework of phenomenology. Thus, its aim is to understand the experience of amputation from the viewpoint of the amputee. Initially, in order to understand the phenomenon that stands before my eyes and calls for clarification, I conducted bibliographic research, which enabled me to understand amputation better and from several points of view, as well as allowing me to appropriate some of the ideas contained in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophic thoughts, in which perception, the perceiving and perceived body, is addressed in regard to its relation with the world and the deep-rooted position of the spirit in this body. After becoming acquainted with amputation from the literary point of view, I sought to share it with an amputee, inhabiting this person’s world. By sharing this moment, I was able to understand its significance and meanings, expressing them in the form of thematic categories. Thus, it was possible to reveal some of the facets of the amputation phenomenon, besides understanding the amputee and amputation such as it reveals itself.

O fenômeno da medicalização organiza, hoje, o modo como as pessoas vivem e se compreendem. Desde os anos 1960, esse tema ganhou destaque em diversos artigos. Entendese que tal processo é complexo e, além de produzir a patologização da vida, também pode ser analisado como uma resposta a diversas necessidades humanas. Na presente pesquisa, o processo de medicalização foi pensado a partir do referencial teórico-metodológico da fenomenologia, compreendendo o homem como ser-no-mundo, cuja humanidade reside na sua essência de ser desvelador de mundo. Nessa perspectiva, a medicalização expressa um modo de compreensão técnico do mundo, um processo que busca controlar, assegurar, padronizar e prever os fenômenos multideterminados do ser humano, submetendo a complexidade deste à disciplina da medicina, que sempre poderá lhe oferecer intervenções e explicações. A resistência a esse processo torna-se um tema importante de pesquisa, dada sua abrangência e profundidade no modo de vida atual. A psiquiatria francesa apresenta resistências singulares ao hiperdiagnóstico do TDAH, uma expressão da medicalização. O trabalho de campo foi realizado na França e buscou formular articulações com o enfrentamento brasileiro. O objetivo geral desta pesquisa é investigar o sentido da resistência à medicalização, de modo a ampliar a compreensão desse fenômeno. Para tanto, dois aportes de dados foram utilizados: a análise documental dos coletivos Pas de Zéro de Conduite pour les enfants de trois ans, Lappel des appels e Stop-DSM e a análise de entrevistas com profissionais da saúde franceses. Para a análise das entrevistas, baseamo-nos na Hermenêutica da Facticidade. As entrevistas foram realizadas em formato de rede: a cada conversa a pesquisadora apresentava elementos que surgiram nas entrevistas anteriores, de modo que a própria pesquisa se tornasse um instrumento de resistência, coletivizando a discussão do tema. Assim, após a etapa de campo na França, entrevistamos Manuel Vallée, da Universidade de Auckland, cujo artigo foi citado em todas as conversas com os profissionais franceses. Como resultado, partindo das estratégias apreendidas em campo, chegamos a quatro fundamentos da resistência à medicalização na França: 1) a concepção de homem como possibilidade de ser, entendendo que ele está sempre aberto para as possibilidades que se apresentam no futuro indeterminado, resistindo à cristalização de um diagnóstico; 2) a pluralidade de práticas e métodos de pesquisa coexistindo de forma a contrapor o monismo metodológico; 3) a construção de redes como estratégia de enfrentamento à individualização/biologização das problemáticas humanas; 4) as intervenções multifocais, com cuidado multidisciplinar, considerando o contexto social, cultural e político dos usuários como enfrentamento à hiperprescrição de medicamentos pautada por interesses financeiros na área da saúde. No processo de medicalização da sociedade, o lugar de convivência entre os homens, a política, perde seu espaço para a ciência, que passa a regulamentar o modo como os homens devem viver, assegurando os resultados dos seus modos de vida. As estratégias de resistência à medicalização apreendidas nesta pesquisa apontam para o fortalecimento do campo político, âmbito em que a verdade plural vigora, como principal direcionamento desse enfrentamento / The phenomenon of medicalization organizes today how people lives and understands themselves. Since the 1960s, this subject has gained prominence in several articles. It is understood that such a process is complex and, in addition to producing the pathologization of life, it can also be analyzed as a response to various human needs. The process of medicalization was thought from the theoretical-methodological referential of the phenomenology, comprising man as a being-in-the-world, whose humanity resides in his essence of being someone who uncovers the world. In this perspective, medicalization expresses a way of technically understanding the world, a process that seeks to control, ensure, standardize, and predict the multi-determinate phenomena of the human being, subjecting its complexity to the discipline of medicine, which can always offer it interventions and explanations. The resistance to this process becomes an important research topic given its scope and depth in the current way of life. French psychiatry has unique resistances to the hyperdiagnosis of ADHD, which is an expression of medicalization. The fieldwork was carried out in France and it seeks to articulate with the Brazilian confrontation. The overall objective of this research is to investigate the meaning of resistance to medicalization, in order to broaden the understanding of this phenomenon. To that end, two data sources were used: the documentary analysis of the collectives Pas de Zéro de Conduite pour les enfants de trois ans, L\'appel des appels and Stop-DSM and the interviews with French healthcare professionals. For the analysis of the interviews, we were based on the Hermeneutics of the Facticity. The interviews were carried out in a network format: at each conversation, the investigator presented elements that were brought up in the previous interviews, so that the research itself became an instrument of opposition, collectivizing the discussion of the subject. Thus, after the field stage in France, we interviewed Manuel Vallée of the University of Auckland, whose article was quoted in all conversations with the French. As a result, we came to four elements of the resistance to medicalization in France: 1) the conception of man as a possibility of being, understanding that he is always open to the possibilities that present themselves in the indeterminate future, resisting to the crystallization of a diagnosis; 2) the plurality of practices and research methods coexisting so as to counter methodological monism; 3) the construction of networks as a strategy to confront the individualization / biologization of human problems; 4) multifocal interventions, with multidisciplinary care considering the social, cultural, and political context of the users as a confrontation with the hyperprescription of medicines guided by financial interests in the healthcare area. In the process of medicalization of society, the place of coexistence between men, the politics, loses its space for science, which governs how men should live, ensuring the results of their ways of life. The elements of the resistance to medicalization observed, point to the strengthening of the political field, in which plural truth prevails, as the main direction of this confrontation

Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / The argument of this dissertation is that futurity is a central theme of phenomenology, because it is central to a proper understanding of two pillars of the phenomenological method, namely, constituting consciousness and intentionality. The centrality of futurity to phenomenology first manifests itself in all three levels of Husserl's constituting consciousness via the three-fold distinction within futurity between protention, expectation, and anticipation. This analysis of futurity within constituting consciousness reveals that the object of futurity must bear a necessary relation to our horizons of constitution, but an analysis of anticipation itself suggests that futurity cannot be solely contained within those horizons. In turning to that which opens the subject to what is beyond its own horizons of constitution, we see that futurity enables Levinas to insert a level of passive-ication into intentionality, and thereby into ethics and constituting consciousness as well. The consequences of this for phenomenology manifest themselves most clearly in Derrida's parallel analyses of futurity (via the notions of differance and the messianic) and the promise. Through this latter we see the fundamental necessity of both constituting consciousness and intentionality for the phenomenological subject. The dissertation concludes with a brief examination of how these conclusions might apply to the philosophy of religion via an analysis of the question of the possibility or impossibility of the divine. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Arthur Madigan / Since at least Galileo, not only the technological abilities of natural science but the meaning of science's claims have been shaken to their very foundations, according to Edmund Husserl. We know what scientists say, but we do not know what they mean. Nor, Husserl claims, do they know what they mean. They do what works. They measure, they tabulate, they calculate. But they do not thereby really know the world. And since they are the standing authorities of knowledge in our culture, we do not have a reliable referent to which we can turn for an appropriate standard of meaning. At some level we realize that this piece of paper in my hand is not precisely a geometrical rectangle, in which all four angles are exactly ninety degrees and both sets of sides are exactly parallel to each other, but for the most part we simply identify it as a rectangle and move on. In our everyday experience, Husserl would say, we tend to conflate geometrical space and experiential space. We do not, however, have any real idea why we can do so effectively, even if we are engineers or physicists. Geometrical shapes are categorically different from the shapes we daily experience in our interactions with the world. No matter how carefully I draw lines or cut edges, I can never make a piece of paper (or, for that matter, a cow) that exactly meets the requirements of a geometrical rectangle. Even the fact that geometrical rectangles are, by definition, plane figures, which means they only have two dimensions, rather than the (at least) three that structure any perceptible thing, prevents perceptible things from ever meeting the strict requirements of geometrical figures. Given this basic disparity, what is it that justifies our using these geometrical figures to describe the perceptible world in which we live? If we want to know the world, Husserl tells us, we need to know what our scientific claims mean. This, he claims, is the only way we can meaningfully ground our increasingly science-governed lives. Plan of the Dissertation In this dissertation, then, I undertake the project of identifying more precisely what this problem is and offering some solution to it. My argument will have three steps. I shall argue first that to solve the problem Husserl so helpfully lays out, we need to go back to Aristotle's Metaphysics; second, that although Aristotle proposes a solution for the metaphysical problems implied by using mathematics to know perceptible things, this solution fails to answer the questions as he presents them, even if it is broadly interpreted; and, finally, that there are within Aristotle's metaphysical thought implicit resources for constructing this missing metaphysical justification, and that these can be found explicitly in his way of thinking about the distinction between actuality and potency, in his discussion of the metaphysical implications of knowing, and in his discussion of material causality. The basic problem is that mathematical objects and perceptible things are different kinds of things. We would not say that `Joe's idea is hungry' in anything other than a very metaphorical way, because we recognize that ideas are not the kinds of things that get hungry. Hunger is the province of animals. Ideas are not animals. Ideas, then, cannot be hungry. Mathematical objects and perceptible things, though, while also different kinds of things, are regularly combined. We do say, `This piece of paper is rectangular', although it would seem that pieces of paper (or cows) are not the kinds of things that could be rectangles. In this dissertation, I begin in chapter one with a careful recapitulation of Husserl's articulation of this problem of thoughtlessly conflating mathematical and experiential things. Husserl takes this to be the root of the crisis, not only of the meaning of the sciences, but also of all human meaning. I use Husserl's articulation, rather than simply explaining the problem as I understand it and moving directly to Aristotle's Metaphysics, where I see the roots of its solution, in part because Husserl's work was so influential in shaping my own understanding of the problem. More importantly, though not unrelatedly, Husserl helpfully contextualizes the problem both culturally and historically. He tells us why this matters, and he tells us how it seems to have happened. Both of these seem to me to be crucial to any ultimately successful resolution to the problem. In Husserl's articulation of the problem, he identifies Galileo as responsible for taking it as `obvious' that the `universally valid' shapes of geometry constituted the objectively real component of all things. He argues that Galileo inherits a tradition in which our approximations to `limit shapes' and the increased precision in replicating these made possible by technological advances gradually meld together, such that we learn to take the world to be fundamentally a mathematical manifold. In taking over this tradition, Galileo simply presumes that the world is fundamentally mathematizable and sets about developing methods by which even the concrete sensory plena through which any experienced shape is necessarily presented can be mathematized. Since we take as `given' these assumptions, whose origin Husserl attributes to Galileo, and which remain unjustified metaphysically, Husserl's tracing of the development of these assumptions can help us notice and evaluate them. This will be helpful in recovering the meaning of our mathematical scientific claims, and, ultimately, in recovering the meaning of our non-scientific claims. While Husserl helpfully identifies the problem and begins the historical tracing he proposes with his analysis of Galileo's assumptions, he does not complete the latter project, in part because he died so soon after beginning it. His project in the Crisis, as with many of the projects he undertook as a scholar, gets developed in many different directions, without any of these being completed. He proposes a philosophical-historical retracing of the assumptions of geometry, from its earliest inception through the present. He proposes a simultaneous careful consideration of the metaphysical assumptions at work in mathematical science and the justification necessary for it. He proposes transcendental phenomenology as the way to correctly understand the correlation between mathematical claims and the perceptible world they describe. While the development of transcendental phenomenology and the ways that it can help us come to understand more correctly our interaction with the world are fascinating, in this dissertation I want to focus on Husserl's other proposals toward a solution, namely the philosophical-historical retracing of assumptions and the metaphysical analysis. Specifically, I want to focus on the metaphysical analysis that Aristotle performs on the problems generated by presuming that one can use mathematical objects to know perceptible things. In chapter two, then, I explain more thoroughly the first two proposals toward a solution that Husserl proposes, and defend my claim that this metaphysical analysis in Aristotle is an appropriate continuation of Husserl's project. For completeness, Husserl's project needs, in addition to his tracing of the historical sources of lazy assumptions, an Aristotelian metaphysical analysis of what material and mathematical things are, to clarify whether and how mathematics could be appropriately (or inappropriately) applied to material things. In chapter three, I turn to Aristotle's Metaphysics and cull from its pages, primarily from Books III and XIII, the basic metaphysical questions and problems that arise in Aristotle's discussion of the use of mathematical objects to know perceptible things. I organize these into six central questions: 1) What exactly are the mathematical objects Aristotle discusses? 2) Are these mathematical objects substances? 3) Are these mathematical objects separable from perceptible things? 4) Are these mathematical objects constituents of perceptible things? 5) Are these mathematical objects principles or causes of perceptible things? 6) Is knowledge of these mathematical objects somehow knowledge of perceptible things? From these six questions, the basic problem that emerges is that knowledge of mathematical objects requires these objects to be exact, unchangeable, and indivisible, whereas the perceptible things of which they are supposed to provide knowledge are less determinate, changeable, and divisible. It seems like the mathematical objects would have to be separate from these perceptible things to be objects of mathematical knowledge, but if they were so, it is unclear how knowledge of them could be taken to also be knowledge of the perceptible things. These mathematical objects would have to somehow be part of the causal structure of these perceptible things for knowledge of them to be knowledge of these perceptible things. In chapter four, I take up the solution that Aristotle proposes for these difficulties, the `insofar as'/ `qua' (hêi) structure of knowing. Various attributes belong to a given perceptible thing in virtue of various ways of its being. Being green belongs to a plant, for example, insofar as it is a surface. The method of abstraction (aphairesis) allows us to separate out in thought the relevant way of being of the thing, so as to make the appropriate attribution to it. We can know a thing as something, even if that `something' is not itself actually separable. This proposal of Aristotle's begins to resolve some of the metaphysical problems that chapter three articulated. It is not itself, however, metaphysically justified. While it seems that we do regularly make these kinds of claims about perceptible things, it is not clear what justifies us in separating in thought what is not separate in fact, nor just how these various ways of being belong to the unified perceptible thing such that knowledge of them provides knowledge of the thing. This difficulty in giving a metaphysically coherent account of Aristotle's model of abstraction pervades the scholarly literature. Aristotle, it seems, does not have a satisfactory solution to the troubling metaphysical problems he raises about using mathematical objects to know perceptible things. In my fifth, and final, chapter, I undertake to construct from other texts in Aristotle's corpus a metaphysical justification for his model of abstraction that can, in fact, resolve the metaphysical problems that he and Husserl have raised. I find this metaphysical justification in an implicit claim of Aristotle's, to be found in the same section where he proposes his model of abstraction as a solution (Met XIII.3): the claim that mathematical objects are potential substances. I examine what these potential substances are, how they are related to their own actualizations and how they are related to the perceptible things of which they are supposed to provide knowledge, relying primarily on Metaphysics VIII and IX. I consider how knowledge of these could be possible, using texts from De Anima III, and then explore a connection between these potencies and the material cause of perceptible things in Physics II.9. I conclude at last that we are, in fact, justified in using mathematical objects to describe perceptible things. These objects, however, are mathematically describable only insofar as they are material, by which Aristotle means, insofar as they are potential, rather than actual. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.