<p>The plethora of contrary doctrines pertaining to salvation, among the variety of religions in the world today, creates a problem for the sincere investigator who seeks to find out if there is such a thing as salvation and, if there is, how to be saved. These contrary doctrines are problematic to the degree that the sincere investigator is unable to evaluate the probability of some of these doctrines over others. In order to aid the sincere investigator with this problem, I explore methods for evaluating doctrines that purport to affect one?s salvation.

<p> Abstract not available.</p>

This study adapts the crucial distinction between priority in substance and priority in definition in Aristotle's metaphysics to the case of the demonstrative science of geometry. Based on this adaptation, it is argued that a tension between knowledge and reality, which is concomitant with the distinction between priority in definition and priority in substance, does not arise in geometry. This result argues that the root of the tension between knowledge and reality in Aristotle's general metaphysics lies in the physical 'stuff' intuition concerning matter, since this tension in the case of physical objects is absent in the case of geometrical objects. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-03, Section: A, page: 0785. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.

Studies in education have usually attached importance to the precise definition of key words such as "education," "teaching," and "learning." Because these words are used in everyday speech with widely ranging meanings, the educational theorist is faced with a choice between defining terms narrowly at the expense of loss of conventional breadth of reference--thereby facing charges of stipulating eccentric meanings, or defining in such vague terms as to capture common usage and, in so doing, sacrifice precise discriminations. This dilemma may be avoided through the establishment of a model of education which puts less emphasis on the individual acts denoted by the ambiguous terms. / The concepts of education, teaching and learning are examined from this perspective. It is argued that teaching and learning should not be viewed just as unconnected events, nor syllabus content as knowledge independent of teacher and student. An attempt to explore the interactive nature of teaching is made through a study of the relations between teaching and learning. There is also an investigation of the different kinds of authority which prevail in the teacher/student relationship. / Epistemological considerations have often been invoked in decisions concerning curriculum content. This is not the only way in which aspects of knowledge intrude on the teaching situation. While categories of knowledge may well be considered in organizing what is taught, it is also the case that the actual learning will involve the student in the construction of categories of thought which she will strive to make coherent with the cognitive structures that she brings to the learning episode. It is argued that a suitable model of teaching must allow for teaching to be not just didactic. Teaching which accommodates the student's state of development will consist of both presentations and diagnostic appraisals. The interaction between teacher and student occurs as a sequence of acts, the progress of which will be and will be affected by appraisals and presentations by both parties. These sequences of acts are termed "teaching programs" and are given unity by the educational objectives which give them purpose. The inclusion of appraisals as well as presentations enables this model to accommodate the mutual understanding which teacher and student require in their educational encounters. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-06, Section: A, page: 1826. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-10, Section: A, page: 5477. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

An inquiry into the issue of theodicy reveals both theoretical and practical concerns. Theoretically, the issue of theodicy is raised against the background of a question or trilemma which revolves around the apparent contradiction involved in the simultaneous affirmation of three traditional postulates: Evils occur; God is omnibenevolent; God is omnipotent. Any theodicy which successfully answers the question/trilemma will deny or qualify one or more of the three traditional postulates. The practical concern of theodicy relates to the ethical foundations which theodicies provide for moral behavior. Theodicies which lend positive and neutral valuations to evil phenomena function as supports for masochism, quietism and oppression. / The proposal for an ethical theodicy limits the theoretical options for theodicy to those options which do not consistently function as legitimations for masochism, quietism and oppression. First, an ethical theodicy must affirm the reality of genuine evil and allow for the possibility that such evil can be overcome. Second, an ethical theodicy must either deny God's omnibenevolence or affirm God's omnibenevolence without qualification. Finally, an ethical theodicy must either deny or qualify God's omnipotence. / From introductory concerns relating to the theoretical and practical dimensions of theodicy the discussion turns to a comprehensive analysis of the theodicy of Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead's theodicy is logically plausible, and it fulfills the requirements for an ethical theodicy in acknowledging the reality of genuine evil, affirming an unqualified version of God's omnibenevolence and denying God's omnipotence. However, Whitehead's conviction that genuine evil is inevitable has some quietistic implications which should be overcome with a modified position that, however unlikely, genuine evil can indeed be avoided. / Aside from the position on the inevitability of genuine evil, Whitehead's theodicy is both theoretically and ethically sound. In this regard, therefore, Whitehead's theodicy shows immense promise for the future of philosophical theology and theological ethics. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-06, Section: A, page: 1699. / Major Professor: John J. Carey. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1989.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 36-02, Section: A, page: 0945. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1975.

In this dissertation, I develop a theory of interpretation that attends to the often neglected affective dimensions of reading through a careful investigation of the writings of Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. For much of the history of Western thought, a privileging of systematic and linear discourse as a crucial signifier of philosophical rigor has gone hand in hand with a certain disdain for the body and the emotions. The texts that I examine attempt to disrupt and discredit the equation of philosophy and systematicity. They refuse both in content and in style the steady march of analytic logic in favor of writing that is more intuitive, more experimental, and eminently more risky. I contend that even psychoanalytic and deconstructive interpretive approaches, which privilege the marginal, the de-centered, and the inaccessible, have not fully engaged with the question of affect in philosophical writing. The overarching question this dissertation seeks to examine is this: how can we find a way to take seriously the affective responses that philosophical texts provoke, and to incorporate their content, strength, and effect into the arsenal of strategies for reading and interpretation without relegating such reactions to the damning category of the "merely subjective"? I take as my primary focus texts that foreground and even force an affective response, and I read such works as possessed of their own distinctive rigor. I maintain that one of the ways that affect is made evident to the reader is through what I term a "rigorous unintelligibility." I argue that attention to the protocols of such rigorously unintelligible texts produces a way to read that neither accentuates the individual reader at the expense of the text, nor banishes the reader's visceral affective reactions to the realm of the subjective and inadmissible. Throughout, I refine the always slippery category of affect. In particular, affect is not simply interior; rather, it emerges and communicates itself through the ongoing interaction with the world. Affect is in rooms, in texts, in averted glances, in speeches, in dreams, in crying jags and in lecture notes, in philosophy and in poetry, in theories and in bodies. It has a deeply un-Cartesian lack of respect for or knowledge of the membrane of the skin, the boundary between the self and the world.

While studies have shown the close connection between liberation theology and Marxism, no one has probed the relationship between liberation theology and anarchism. This study will show that in many of its most prominent themes liberation theology has an anarchist dimension. Its particular ethical concern with freedom, justice, equality, and love, its denunciation of political and economic structures of domination, its emphasis on action, its championing of all oppressed people, its realistic consideration of the issue of violence, and its vision of a future free from all servitudes reveal an indebtedness to anarchism. / This study will also examine some of the sources that have helped lead liberation theology in an anarchist direction. The anarchist elements in the Bible, the example of primitive Christianity, the example of popular religious movements, the progressive elements within the Church, the anarchist components of Marxism, and the influence of certain Latin American political activists and theoreticians have all contributed to the anarchist dimension of liberation theology. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-12, Section: A, page: 3754. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

A study of the concepts of God in the deistic and theistic traditions of Western Civilization seen from the viewpoint of empirical philosophy. / The nature of concepts is investigated including the cultural factors which contribute to their growth particularly those found in science and theology together with social influences which can affect their evolution. The three basic arguments for the existence of God: the ontological (Anselm), cosmological (Aquinas) and teleological (Butler and Paley) are examined as sources of the attributes which are essential to the concept of God. The attributes themselves are then examined for the consistency and coherence of each as they become a part of the unity of the concept. / The works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, William James, Edgar D. Brightman and A. N. Whitehead are drawn upon for critical evaluation of the arguments for the existence of God and the attributes which are implied in the arguments. Since the publication of Mill's Essays on Religion, a growing awareness of the problems of combining the traditional attributes given to God in one concept has tended to lead to a search for modified concepts of God. One result has been an emphasis upon considering finite aspects in the concept as a possible solution. In this respect the works of Mill, James, Brightman and Whitehead are considered in more detail together with empirical criticisms thereof. / The suggestion is made that the concept of a monotheistic, transcendent God be retained in its presently deistic form as an object of worship for religion and a source of the universe and its laws for theology. A solution for the problem of theodicy may be found in the development of a concept of a sub-absolute deity now in the process of evolution along with the universe. / This deity would be finite-dependent for its growth and would be complete when all finite value potentials are achieved. It would be Supreme (finite) Being. The finite universe now has its raison d'etre and man can contribute to the growth of finite deity. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-09, Section: A, page: 2722. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.