<p> I consider the claims made by medical ethicists that funding by pharmaceutical companies threaten the integrity of medical research and the claims of philosophers of science that evidence-based medicine can provide a sound epistemic foundation on which to base medical treatment decisions. Drawing on both game theory and medical history, I argue that both medical ethicists and philosophers of science have missed crucial aspects of medical research. I show that both veritistic and commercial aims are enduring and entrenched aspects of medical research. Because these two drives are perpetually pulling medical research in different directions, I identify the resultant conflict as the fundamental antagonism </p><p> The primary task of the dissertation is to provide a framework that incorporates both drivers of medical research. Specifically, I argue that medical research is best conceived of as an asymmetric arms race. Such a dynamic is typified by a series of moves and countermoves between competing parties who are adjusting to one another's behavior, in this case between those who seek to make medical practice more responsive to good evidence and those whose primary motivations are instead commercial in character. </p><p> Such a model presents three challenges to standard evidential hierarchies which equate epistemic reliability with methodological rigor. The first is to show that reliability and rigor can (and do) come apart as a result of the countermeasures employed by manufactures. This fact suggests that in considering policy proposals to improve epistemic reliability, it is robustness (i.e. resistance to manipulation) that should be the crucial desideratum. The second consequence is a reorientation of medical epistemology. One of the primary strategies that manufacturers have employed is to manipulate the dissemination of information. A focus on an isolated knower obscures the impact that industry has in shaping what information is available. To address these problems medical knowledge must be understood from a social epistemological framework. Finally, and most importantly, the arms race account suggests that the goal of identifying the perfect experimental design or inference pattern is chimerical. There is no final resolution to the fundamental antagonism between commercial and scientific forces. There is only a next move.</p>

<p> The psychologist J. J. Gibson, and later the enactivists, espoused a view of perception emphasized active sensory exploration, and the biological functions perception serves. They tended to neglect the internal complexity of perceptual systems. Neuroscientists and computer vision researchers, on the other hand, focus on the complex structure and inner workings of perceptual systems, to the neglect of biological and behavioral context. Here I will formulate a version of ecological realism which reconciles and critiques these seemingly disparate approaches. </p><p> I argue that the objects of perception are relational invariant structures preserved within the changing flux of perceptual input. The function of perception is to enable appropriate behavior with respect to affordances, which are objective three-way relations between worldly features, animal abilities, and animal needs. The invariant relationships perceived tend to be those which signify affordance relationships for the species and individual in question. </p><p> The perception-action cycle is but one example of the circular dynamics of perceptual systems. The neural portions of such systems are also in a state of constant feed-forward and feedback dynamical interaction with one another. These dynamics confer an active autonomy on perceptual systems as manifested by phenomena like dreams, hallucinations, and perceptual illusions. Metaphorically, such systems may function to constantly formulate and test hypotheses about affordances based on perceptual evidence and prior categorical experience. Hierarchical predictive models of perception, in which perceptual systems consist of a hierarchy of Bayesian statistical predictors, represent a possible means by which this metaphor might be crafted into a testable scientific hypothesis. Perception, even if it involves actively autonomous perceptual systems coping with ambiguous input, is epistemically reliable most of the time, because it is constantly tested by action. Perceptual states are true or valid if they bear an appropriate relationship to objective affordance relationships, and false or invalid if they do not. These views require a reformulation of the venerable distinction between `direct' and `indirect' perception. Perception is ontologically direct in the sense of dealing in objective relationships in the world, but justificationally indirect in the sense of requiring an argument that perceptual beliefs are generally epistemically reliable.</p>

<p> In this dissertation I discern what Carl Jung calls the mandala image of the ultimate archetype of unity underlying and structuring cosmos and psyche by pointing out parallels between his transpersonal psychology and Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind's string theory. Despite his atheistic, materialistically reductionist interpretation of it, I demonstrate how Susskind's string theory of holographic information conservation at the event horizons of black holes, and the cosmic horizon of the universe, corroborates the following four topics about which Jung wrote: (1) his near-death experience of the cosmic horizon after a heart attack in 1944; ( 2) his equation relating psychic energy to mass, "Psyche=highest intensity in the smallest space" (1997, 162), which I translate into the equation, Psyche=Singularity; (3) his theory that the mandala, a circle or sphere with a central point, is the symbolic image of the ultimate archetype of unity through the union of opposites, which structures both cosmos and psyche, and which rises spontaneously from the collective unconscious to compensate a conscious mind torn by irreconcilable demands (1989, 334-335, 396-397); and (4) his theory of synchronicity. I argue that Susskind's inside-out black hole model of our Big Bang universe forms a geometrically perfect mandala: a central Singularity encompassed by a two-dimensional sphere which serves as a universal memory bank. Moreover, in precise fulfillment of Jung's theory, Susskind used that mandala to reconcile the notoriously incommensurable paradigms of general relativity and quantum mechanics, providing in the process a mathematically plausible explanation for Jung's near-death experience of his past, present, and future life simultaneously at the cosmic horizon. Finally, Susskind's theory also provides a plausible cosmological model to explain Jung's theory of synchronicity--meaningful coincidences may be tied together by strings at the cosmic horizon, from which they radiate inward as the holographic "movie" of our three-dimensional world.</p>

<p>At the end of the nineteenth century Charles Sanders Peirce wrote that "chance begets order" - indeterministic or `chancy' processes can underlie orderly and seemingly deterministic processes. Indeed, Peirce argues that indeterminism is the seed of all order in the natural world. The dissertation explores this theme in three parts. The first chapter reconstructs and elaborates Peirce's objections against necessitarianism, the position that all natural laws are perfectly orderly, deterministic. The second chapter examines and elaborates Ronald Aylmer Fisher's sophisticated analogy between gas models from statistical mechanics and his own population genetics models. The final chapter treats a contemporary indeterministic account of biological fitness and examines several points on which intuitions from deterministic theories misinterpret this quintessentially indeterministic position. The dissertation motivates an indeterministic theory of natural law and reinvigorates its implications for hierarchical models of the natural world.</p> / Dissertation

<p> This dissertation is theoretical study of horse-human relationship, addressing the topics of communication, learning and cognition in the context of the cybersemiotic model developed by philosopher of science S&oslash;ren Brier. This study found significant gaps in the literature with respect to how horses and humans communicate and learn together, and is an attempt to develop an integral conceptual model grounded in communication and learning theory. </p><p> The overarching theoretical platform is the cybersemiotic model, which is a transdisciplinary research platform that addresses knowledge creation from an objective and subjective vision of reality. The center of knowledge in this model is semiosis, the sign system and spheres of signification through which living beings create meaning and make sense of the world. The cybersemiotic model is inclusive of non-human languaging systems, grounded in the biosemiotic view that extends sign systems to the life world of animals. The analysis of horse-human communication is performed using Bateson's theories of non-verbal communication and learning, based on the second-order cybernetic science view. Likewise, the topic of the role of inner life and consciousness in horse-human interaction is analyzed through the phenomenological, pragmaticist philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and his triadic conception of semiosis. </p><p> The results of this theoretical and philosophical exploration point to the need to begin constructing serious, scientifically grounded conceptual frames that can inform equestrian activities across a wide variety of disciplines such as competition and entertainment, leisure, horse training, and equine-facilitated psychotherapy/learning (EFP/L). These disciplines are fairly divided in their view of horses, especially when it comes to communication protocols, equine intelligence, and the use of a shared language to describe horse-human interaction. </p><p> Besides starting to lay theoretical groundwork for conceptualizing how horses and humans communicate and learn together, this dissertation also addresses the fundamental issue of personal safety and ethics in horse communities. The horse industry is a billion dollar industry in the U.S. and other Western nations, with most horses living in captivity in human-controlled environments. As the horse industry grows, so do the number of related accidents, making equestrian sports one of the most dangerous. An understanding of ethologically grounded communication principles is essential in ensuring greater safety for horse handlers and the wellbeing of horses. It is also key in addressing the larger question of ethics in the relationships of humans to non-human others and the ecology of the Earth at large.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0507. Adviser: Nicholas C. Burbules. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 194-204) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2008. / Title from title screen (viewed February 23, 2009) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of Studies in Religion, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2008; thesis submitted 2007. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-05, Section: A, page: 1811. Adviser: Alexander L. Mayer. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-329) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis--School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1995. / Shipping list no.: 1998-0921-M. "August 1997." Also available via Internet from the Air University Press web site. Address as of 11/3/03: http://aupress.au.af.mil/SAAS%5FTheses/Pellegrini/pellegrini.pdf; current access is available via PURL.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-239).