It was the purpose of this study to identify the influences that contributed to bringing about curriculum change in selected educational agencies which employed consultants in the social sciences through NDEA Title III-B projects. The research attempted to find the ways districts planned, organized, and implemented curriculum change through the use of the NDEA consultants. It focused on the procedures, interrelationships, and interactions taking place within the structure of the projects and the agencies involved in accomplishing those projects. Neither the amount nor the direction of the changes was the intent of the study. NOTE: Both archival copies of this manuscript held within the University of the Pacific library were missing page 203.

Beyond the Stereotype of Black Homophobia: Exploring the Potential of Black Allies for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Students Strides at the federal and state levels are being made to improve the overall climate for gay rights and relationships across the country. However, despite greater acceptance, legislative victories and visibility of gay rights and relationships, homophobia is still widespread in American society (Fone, 2000; Jenkins, Lambert, & Baker, 2009; Schroeder, 2004). No matter the environment, homophobic attitudes permeate all aspects of the US culture, leading to prejudicial attitudes and inequalities that affect everyone in society. Unfortunately, some of these prejudicial attitudes lead to instituting laws that are inherently homophobic (HRC, n.d.). Trends illustrate that more people are coming out at a younger age in society, creating a larger number of `out' students on college campuses. However, the increase in `out' students has also led to an increase of prejudice and discrimination based on sexual orientation more visible on college campuses (Cannick, 2007; D'Augelli & Rose, 1990; Jenkins et al., 2009). Current research indicates Black college students are more likely than other college students to hold negative attitudes toward LGB students. The purpose of this research was to explore and describe perceptions and feelings of Black college students toward LGB students. A qualitative online survey using open and close-ended questions was sent out nationally to a number of college campuses to solicit responses. Major findings include the following: 1) participants have the potential to be allies for and hold positive perceptions of LGB identified students, 2) contact with LGB individuals affects the participants' ability to have more positive perceptions, and 3) participants are receptive to engage in conversations about LGB related issues. Implications of this study suggest collaboration among multicultural offices and other campus constituents for social and academic related programming. In addition, there is a need to provide a space for potential student allies to feel supported and engage in their own self-reflection and learning on how to create community among individuals that hold multiple social identities.

The full text will be made available at the end of the embargo period.

Religious diversity largely defines the present religious situation; comparative theology adaptively responds to this situation by comparing influential theological hypotheses from different contexts and developing theological hypotheses from that inquiry. The popularity and sophistication of the Bhagavad-Gītā and Fourth Gospel make these scriptures excellent comparative candidates. This dissertation situates these scriptures, interprets them, compares them, and constructs a philosophical theology from the comparison. Part I follows J.A.B. van Buitenen, Angelika Malinar, and Emily Hudson by situating the Bhagavad-Gītā in its original epic context, the Mahābhārata, and philosophical context: Sāṅkhya and Vedānta darśanas. It follows Robert Hill and George MacRae by situating “John” against its dual first-century backgrounds: Judaism and Hellenism. Part II provides an original interpretation of the scriptures. With Śaṅkara, Abhinavagupta, and Hudson, the dissertation interprets the Bhagavad-Gītā as reorienting Arjuna to see the subtlety of karma and dharma and to realize non-duality with Kṛṣṇa/Ātman/Brahman in the devotee’s heart. With Bultmann, Eckhart, Hill, and Neville, the dissertation interprets John as anti-gnostically affirming the cosmos as God’s Logos expression, which elicits love as the appropriate response to the Logos. Part III compares the scriptures in respect to ultimate reality and human existence, the main comparative categories. Ultimate reality comprises four subcategories: (1) cosmic scope and nature, (2) cosmological metaphysics, (3) ontology, and (4) avatāra/incarnation. Despite notable differences, both scriptures emphasize the non- duality of the cosmos with its indeterminate (nirguṇa/ἀόρατος) ontological ground. Existence comprises four subcategories: obligation, comportment, engagement, and life’s meaning. Realizing nonduality with Brahman, seeing everything as the expression of the Logos, provides ecstatic freedom, and the courage to be. Part IV develops a philosophical theology from the comparison. Einstein’s relativity theories weigh the probability that the cosmos pulsates or dies. Evolutionary theory shows that consciousness emerges as an adaptation to environments, not environments for consciousness’s pleasure. After distinguishing physical cosmology from cosmological metaphysics, the dissertation dialectically argues that the cosmos is real, but contingent on the ontological one, which is indeterminate (empty/nothing) apart from its shining forth in the cosmological many. Although this theological hypothesis requires greater breadth for stabilization, it remains tentatively viable for today’s religious situation. / 2024-09-06T00:00:00Z

No description available.

No description available.

[pt] A dissertação investigará a experiência hermenêutica da escrita a partir do ponto de vista da dialética platônica. Como primeiro passo, será exposto o modo como Gadamer promove um debate com a estética moderna para identificar suas limitações e, assim, propor um modo de desobstrução da verdade da obra de arte. O objetivo aí é apontar, neste momento introdutório do problema, como a literatura, entendida amplamente aqui como tudo aquilo que é escrito, acaba por ser afetada por uma experiência limitadora da estética, que transforma o artístico em objeto da consciência estética . Além disso, ver-se-á que esta mesma problematização abrirá para nossa investigação o horizonte hermenêutico da história. Em momento seguinte, a partir de uma leitura fenomenológica do Fedro de Platão, a dialética platônica se apresentará e possibilitará uma primeira abertura para o [e do] escrito. Será, então, finalmente avaliada a dimensão histórica da experiência do escrito, o que conduzirá a investigação à recepção propriamente dita da dialética platônica pela hermenêutica filosófica. Aqui a interpretação dos textos escritos será pensada como abertura para o diálogo com o Outro e a tradição, explicitando a linguisticidade desse acontecimento. A poesia, nesse momento, será exemplo máximo e iluminador das possibilidades de toda obra linguística e literária. / [en] The dissertation will investigate the hermeneutical experience of writing from the point of view of platonic dialectics. As a first step, it will be exposed the way Gadamer promotes a debate with modern aesthetics in order to identify its limitations and, therefore, propose a way of freeing the work of art truth. The objective there is to point out, in this introductory moment of the problem, how literature, broadly understood here as everything that is written, ends up to be affected by a limiting experience of aesthetics, which transforms the artistic into object of the aesthetics consciousness. Besides, it will be seen that this same questioning will open the hermeneutical horizon of history for our investigation. In the next moment, from a phenomenological reading of Plato s Phaedrus, the platonic dialectics will present itself and make possible a first overture for the [and from the] written word. Then, it will be finally evaluated the historical dimension of the written word, which will lead the investigation to the very reception of platonic dialectics by philosophical hermeneutics. Here, the interpretation of written texts will be thought as an overture for the dialogue with the Other and tradition, showing the linguistic character of this event. Poetry, in this moment, will be the greatest and the most illuminating example of the possibilities of the linguistic and literature.

Misinterpretations of William James' pragmatic account of truth are due to three main factors. First, the failure to see the connection between James' account of truth and his account of reality (that is, the connection between pragmatism and radical empiricism). Second, the failure to see James' philosophical project as essentially involving the reinterpretation of traditional philosophical concepts. Third, the mistaken belief that pragmatism provides a formula or rule for determining the truth or falsity of beliefs. In this thesis, these three factors provided a framework for my own interpretation of James' account of truth. In the introduction, I briefly discuss the connection between pragmatism and radical empiricism. In the first chapter, I show that philosophical notions like 'consciousness', 'perception', 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity' are reinterpreted in James' account of reality. In the second chapter, I show how his reinterpretations of 'correspondence', 'coherence', and 'utility' lead to what is better called an 'account' of truth instead of a 'theory' of truth. The third chapter provides further elaboration on his account of truth by examining conceptual systems and 'necessary' truths. In the conclusion, I examine the emphasis which separates James' pragmatic account of truth from other versions, namely, the emphasis on individual experience in determining and constituting truth. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Two sets of concerns have motivated and sustained the research in my dissertation. First, modern ideas of technology and engineering have been over-represented by their dominant forms: that technology is all about progress and the more advanced "high" technology and that engineering chiefly concerns quantity, efficiency, problem-solving, and "better" machines. Second, these potent values in technology and engineering, as a conceptual whole, tend to reinforce each other and create conditions conducive to its sociocultural reproduction that discounts and subjugates viable alternative practices. My dissertation draws on both historical and philosophical approaches to the question of technology and engineering. My historical-linguistic study looks for the historical meanings of the two words—technology and engineering–in connection with their modern counterparts and discusses the social values and conditions that shaped the dynamics of their early development to understand and deconstruct their modern dominant representation. The analysis of ancient writings locates precedent for dominant engineering practice in ancient siege engines and military engineering, where qualities such as quantity, power, superiority, and ingenuity reinforced each other at the critical times of high-stakes siege warfare. I demonstrate how these interlocking qualities became the ideological basis for an enduring historical-conceptual structure of the dominant ideas of engineering that, despite strikingly different social contexts, continues to the present and limits the diversity of knowledge and participants. Returning back to the present, I develop a philosophical critique of contemporary engineering as "technology of technology," in that modern dominant engineering practice becomes technically provincial yet socially ambitious for our personal and institutional technical practice. In this process, certain practices in engineering, including communication, ethical reasoning, empathy, etc., have been marginalized and become what I call the "subjugated technical practice." By identifying the specific criteria and values that systematically discount and exclude the subjugated technical practice in different aspects, my analysis highlights and validates the latter's extraordinary qualities that contribute no less significantly to the success of engineering practice. Finally, to explore the possibilities of substantive policy changes, I propose theory and practice under the heading of "critical reflexive technology" and call for radical changes and critical participation from within and beyond engineering. / Doctor of Philosophy / The dissertation is an interdisciplinary project seeking to critique and engage with contemporary engineering practice that predominantly emphasizes certain values—such as quantity, efficiency, problem-solving, and "better" machines—and narrows the diversity of knowledge and participants. Toward this end, my research has two parts: one that concerns the genesis and perpetuation of the dominant ideas of engineering in history and the other that is grounded in the philosophical critique of contemporary engineering practice. My historical analysis carries out etymological studies of words and uncovers the social context that has shaped their meanings since antiquity. Whereas technology, in the sense of Ancient Greek techne, denotes effective means toward an end that is diverse in scope with many possibilities, the idea of engineering has drawn from the concepts of engines and machines and connoted a tendency for means and goals that can be evaluated more or less quantitatively. Emphasis on quantity varied in degree and was not universal. Still, it was most conspicuous in the ancient writing of military engineering on siege engines, when numbers were correlated with the ideas of power, superiority, and ingenuity at the critical times of high-stakes siege warfare. I argue that while these ideas of engineering initially claimed precedence in the context of military conflicts and war engines, they coalesced into an integrated value system and became the ideological basis for the narrowed concepts of modern engineering. My philosophical critique of modern engineering characterizes it as a negative instance of "technology of technology," in that widespread practice in engineering becomes technically provincial yet socially ambitious for our personal and institutional technical practice. In this process, certain practices in engineering, including communication, ethical reasoning, empathy, etc., have been marginalized and become what I call the "subjugated technical practice." By identifying the criteria and values that render the subjugated technical practice irrelevant and undesirable in engineering, my analysis calls attention to the latter's extraordinary qualities that contribute no less significantly to the success of engineering practice. Finally, to explore the possibilities of substantive policy changes, I propose theory and practice under the heading of "critical reflexive technology" and call for radical changes and critical participation from within and beyond engineering.

no / The title The Demons of Science may at first appear like a contradiction in terms. Demons are associated with the forces of darkness; science represents the power of light. One could assume, therefore, that science has no time for demons. This book aims to destroy this assumption. Science opens its gates to demons as long as they play a rational rather than an evil part. They are put to work. Demons are figures of thought: they belong to the category of thought experiments, which are routinely employed in science and philosophy. As they are cast as agents with superhuman abilities, we may expect that demons provide us with valuable—albeit non-empirical—clues about the constitution of the physical world. But I am interested in exploring not only what the demons tell us but also what they do not tell us about our world. They are cast as superhuman actors but even demons have their limitations. The following chapters contain, I believe, the first systematic study of the role of demons in scientific and philosophical reasoning about the external world.