This dissertation presents a critique of modern, technical culture. It focuses on the value of convenience, and argues that this value underlies, to a great extent, modern attitudes toward technology, especially attitudes toward the consumption of technology. In a sense, the dissertation is meant to be a complement to that line of thought which identified the domination of nature as the value which guided the development of science and technology. While the domination of nature may be the value which underlies the activity of those who develop and produce technology, the value of convenience is the value which guides those who consume the various technological apparatuses which are produced by the modern economy. Ultimately, the claim of the dissertation is that the modern prominence of the value of convenience reveals something not only about modern attitudes toward technology, but more importantly, it reveals something about current attitudes toward the human body, mortality, and necessity. The pursuit of the value of convenience is interpreted as an attempt to overcome the body and the various limits which are imposed by man's embodiment. The evidence which is used to support this claim covers a wide range. Shifts in religious ideas and doctrines are examined, and the decline of Christianity in modernity is presented as one factor which has helped to establish the prominence of the value of convenience. Material conditions in the United States are also accorded an important role in the emergence of this value as a dominating force in modernity. Along the way, several competing perspectives on the consumption of technology are criticized. Among these perspectives are those of several contemporary Marxists, as well that of Hannah Arendt. The objective of the dissertation is to foster a critical revaluation of modernity's attitudes toward technology, in the hope that such a revaluation may help to prepare the way for the emergence of a new attitude toward the body and the earth.

In this work I argue on the one hand that the modern family of the west deserves criticism for its role in the persistence of unmet need, of hurtful and unnecessary inequality, and of a harmful management, denial and denigration of difference. On the other hand, I also argue that the modern family deserves some defending, both for its role in creating us as people for whom the legitimacy of our order can be an issue, and because it is a locus of much that people experience as worthwhile. I am concerned in this work not only with the ambiguity of the modern family, but also with the general problem posed by ambiguity and affirmation. I approach this issue from the point of view on an "ontology of discordance." By this view, each way of constructing a self (and so any possible way of forming society) necessarily involves exclusion and loss, and perhaps means denial and denigration as well. I do not think, however, that this fact is necessarily any cause for "pessimism," as there are still grounds on which to defend social order as an achievement. In particular the fact of discordance calls on us to create forms of order which acknowledge their own impositional quality. This means that we must create greater institutional space for unmanaged difference. Along these lines, I affirm the importance, in modern conditions, of maintaining a category of "family," but by this term I mean only a relation whereby child care and household are accorded some distance from the state and from the "public" realm. The point is that we should avoid detailing what constitutes a "family" and instead provide vastly increased across the board support for multiple forms of householding. In particular we need to support all the individuals who care for and protect children. My conclusion is that under modern conditions this kind of minimalist defense of family best serves the causes of equality for women, space for difference, and the end of the imposition of social class.

The objective of this study has been to establish the level of significance that Gustavo Gutierrez and Juan Luis Segundo attribute to politics in their contributions to liberation theology and to extract the relevant consequences for political theory. A systematic analysis of the theory of history in the works of these two authors indicates a higher level of integration between Christianity and politics that is usual in Christian political thought. Liberation is equated with salvation and political liberation is seen as one of its components. This brings politics to a position of privilege. When at the service of justice it occupies, for our authors, a high rank among Christian concerns and when devoted to oppression it requires diligent response from every Christian. This understanding of politics is valuable in that it accentuates the political aspect of the Christian theory of history, an element frequently underestimated. Certain tensions remain, however, in the theory as a result of this emphasis: between the moral improvement expected from the involvement in political activities conducive to justice and the moral ambiguity of political structures emerging from such activity; and between the use of the concept of class struggle and notions of conversion and reconciliation. Finally, there is the danger of reducing the critical ability of Christians regarding a particular political project by identifying it with the concept of eschatology.

The objective of this thesis is to examine the role of conceptual problems in scientific change, especially in the processes of theory appraisal. In the thesis I begin with a review of Buchdahl's, Toulmin's, and Laudan's works on conceptual problems. In the review I show that, although all these writers emphasize the importance of conceptual problems as a criterion of theory appraisal, their works on conceptual problems are not complete. The basis of this thesis is a case study of the nineteenth-century optical revolution. Traditionally, the victory of the wave theory in the revolution was supposed to be due to its empirical successes. However, historical research, presented here, does not support this opinion. I present a different view of the optical revolution, comparing the conceptual problems of wave and particle optics, and identifying the appraisal criteria that historical figures actually employed. I argue that the inferior status of the particle theory in dealing with conceptual problems was the primary cause of the optical revolution. Based on a generalization of a variety of historical cases of conceptual problems, I offer a new account of conceptual problems. First, conceptual problems are the characteristics of conceptual structures rather than theories. Second, the sources of conceptual problems are the processes of concept application, especially in identifying the existence of a concept's referent, in specifying the properties of its referent, and in explicating the procedure of its application. Third, the primary symptom of conceptual problems is that a conceptual structure becomes meaningless. In conclusion, I present a comprehensive set of categories for classifying conceptual problems. / Master of Science

A case study in the sociology of scientific knowledge is presented involving an examination of the development of Thomas Hobbes' mechanics in light of Hobbes' political views and the political context. Hobbes provides a good subject for research in the sociology of scientific knowledge for at least two reasons. First, Hobbes is a good case for examining the interaction between science and the broader political context. Given the controversial nature of Hobbes' political writings (supposedly grounded in his mechanics and aimed at resolving contemporary political problems), the possibility that political considerations entered into the production and reception of Hobbes' mechanics deserves attention. Second, applying new perspectives in the sociology of scientific knowledge can be shown to provide an unexpected payoff in helping resolve persistent disputes among intellectual and political historians regarding the interpretation of Hobbes' work. Specifically, a number of confusions about the relationship between Hobbes' political philosophy and his mechanical philosophy can be cleared up by recognizing that his political views may have influenced his mechanics. The perspective of a general sociology of scientific knowledge provides an appropriate tool for overcoming the reluctance of many political and intellectual historians to examine the social roots of a scientific theory. Hobbes' goal of providing a political philosophy to resolve political turmoil, within the context of Hobbes' participation in discussions on mechanics and mechanical philosophy , resulted in the particular mechanical approach Hobbes embraced. / Master of Science

The epistemological works of Gaston Bachelard (1884- 1962), written and published between 1928 and 1953 try to make traditional philosophers of science aware of the discontinuous structure of scientific change and the dynamics of the scientific mind. Bachelard often argued that the historical and technical progress of the sciences show that the purely descriptive and classificatory features of past science are sooner or later substituted for epistemic models which rely mainly upon the scientist’s power to technically construct the objects of scientific inquiry. The relationships that Bachelard saw between scientists, theories, experimentation, and scientific technology in science led him to coin the philosophical concept of ‘'phenomenotechnique.' This concept reflects the historically contingent, artificial, constructed, social character of both scientific knowledge and scientific entities. Bachelard claimed the instruments are materialized theories. Just like mathematics, they are products of technique. Technique, on the other hand, is the rational expression of the scientist’s world view. Scientific knowledge is what ends up being technically objectified in scientific instrumentation. Groups such as the social constructivists argue that ‘phenomenotechnique’ expresses their own claims regarding the strictly rhetorical nature of science. However, to Bachelard, the presuppositions behind the concept preserve the rational essence of scientific thought. ‘Phenomenotechnique’ is one of the most potentially rich concepts that Bachelard has to offer to contemporary science studies. The purpose of this dissertation is to offer a full account of the history and implications of ‘phenomenotechnique.’ Part I is an explanatory analysis of the concept as it appears in all the epistemological works of Gaston Bachelard. It also shows how ‘phenomenotechnique’ relates with other Bachelardian concepts such as ‘technical materialism,’ ‘epistemological rupture,’ ‘psychoanalysis of scientific thought,’ ’applied materialism,’ and ‘social consensus.’ Part II deals with the intellectual and scientific context of France in the first half of the twentieth century which led Bachelard to coin the term. Finally, Part III will attempt to incorporate ’phenomenotechnique’ into today’s science studies. / Ph. D.

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Contemporary Hobbesian contractarianism began in the wake of John Rawls' revitalization of contractarianism in A Theory of Justice and the subsequent body of critical literature which has grown up around it. Philosophers have been impressed with Rawls' powerful application of a contractarian framework to traditional issues in moral and political philosophy but dismayed at the extensive normative precommitments of his particular contractarian theory. They have thus sought an equally powerful contractarian approach unwed to strong normative precommitments. Of all extant contractarian theories, Thomas Hobbes' theory in Leviathan uniquely constitutes such an approach. Like all contractarians, Hobbes specifies a hypothetical choice problem consisting of a choice environment, a choice problem, and a method of resolution. But Hobbes' choice environment purports to make virtually no substantive normative precommitments. The strength of Hobbesian contractarianism is that it seeks to generate substantive normative conclusions from premises established in a normatively minimalistic theoretical framework, and thus promises not to beg any fundamental normative questions. This dissertation considers in detail three comprehensive and game-theoretically sophisticated books which are central to the current corpus of contemporary Hobbesian contractarianism. These are Jean Hampton's Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, Gregory Kavka's Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, and David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement. We explain the common denominators and points of divergence among these theories while undertaking an extensive critical investigation of each. Two fundamental themes emerge from these investigations. First, Hobbesian contractarianism tends to run afoul of collective action problems at various levels of its overall argument. Collective actions problems arise when the requirements of individual and collective rationality diverge. Second, the normative minimalism which is heralded as the primary virtue of Hobbesian contractarianism is also revealed as one of its fundamental problems. By minimalizing its normative precommitments, Hobbesian contractarianism undermines its ultimate goal of generating powerful normative conclusions.

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A signed LAC Non-Exclusive License form from this author is pending. / In this thesis I attempt to develop an alternative to the logical positivist's image of science, which attempts to exclude beliefs from scientific investigations. First I set the problem up by describing what the positivists mean by belief and how they attempt to exclude belief through the use of the scientific method. I begin to develop an alternative by examining the views of three philosophers of science: Thomas S. Kuhn, Michael Polanyi, and Gerard Radnitzky. Each of them provides an alternative to the positivistic conception of science by suggesting that scientific research is surrounded by a framework of tacit beliefs. I present each view in the following way. First I describe the background and context for the framework hypothesis; then I explain the framework itself, including discussions on the nature of the framework, how it is acquired, its role in visible scientific activity, and how switches from one framework to another occur; finally I assess each person's insights, including each's relevance for my thesis. The examination of these views sets the stage for my last chapter. Here I briefly compare the three thinkers, noting similarities and differences. Then I highlight each thinker's unique insights. Finally, I present a brief description of what I believe is a viable alternative to the positivistic image of science, based on the work of the three philosophers.