This thesis engages with epistemology???s value problem. That is, is knowledge epistemically preferable to true belief? If so, how is that the case? The issue under discussion is whether epistemic justification can account for a value discrepancy between true belief and knowledge. First of all, the contours of the justificatory landscape are presented???in particular, the division between externalist and internalist styles. The thesis then considers whether solely truth-directed justification (which includes externalism) can possibly account for a value unique to knowledge. The preliminary conclusion is that solely truth-directed justification cannot solve the value problem. A discussion of internalism then ensues. The discussion does not focus explicitly on which benefits internalism may offer in terms of value; instead, the focus is on whether internalism qua internalism can solve the value problem. It is concluded that, if internalism is the sole provider of the value of knowledge (above that of true belief), then epistemology must forgo the belief that knowledge is preferable to a Gettiered belief. I do not accept such a concession; therefore, I reject the thesis that internalism exclusively solves the value problem. Throughout the thesis, the importance of externalism to epistemology becomes apparent. This feature invites a reconsideration of the value of externalism (in particular, of reliabilism). The thesis closes by reconsidering the value of reliabilism and concludes that the value problem can be solved, but only by an appeal to externalist justification.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1992. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-88).

The problem of this study was to investigate the philosophical assumptions underlying the holistic paradigm. These underlying philosophical assumptions include beliefs about the nature of being (ontology), goals (axiology), and knowledge (epistemology). The interdependence of these assumptions, as well as how they translate into different research processes, is noted in this study.

This thesis is an empirical investigation into the control mechanisms of headquarters (HQ) exercised over their subsidiaries and is conducted with the help of primary data collected from 147 Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) operating in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Following on from the literature review, this study proposed that the headquarters-subsidiary mechanisms could be linked to agency theory (with the 'classical' principal-agent relationship as its core) and to resource dependency theory (implying relations between the subsidiary and other partners based on interdependence). Our results show that the agency and resource dependency mechanisms are indeed used side by side and complementary to each other to exercise control. The Headquarters-subsidiary model used in this study has four components of control in it: personal centralised control (PCC), bureaucratic formalised control (BFC), output control (OUT) and informal control (INFO). These controls (as an agency mechanism) provide a solid platform on which other mechanisms can be built. The complementarities of these control mechanisms may be linked to earlier studies that show that successful organisations combine tight control with more open, informal and flexible information and communication exchanges. A focus that bends too much towards formal control or too much towards informal control may threaten a company's existence. Our research provides an empirical explanation on this premise. The study found that Anglo-Saxon countries heavily use impersonal types of control mechanisms, specifically bureaucratic formalised control and output control. Compared to the US, the level of control in Oriental subsidiaries is less; or, put differently, the latter enjoy a greater degree of autonomy than US subsidiaries. Once a unit is operational, Oriental parent companies grant many more degrees of freedom than US parent companies. When we deconstructed the results for Europe, comparing German and British MNEs as a group to Oriental MNEs, we found that the latter exercised greater overall control. With regard to output and bureaucratic control, we found that both US MNEs and those from the Middle East exercised greater control than Oriental MNEs. The study drew the aspect of international transfers into the picture and investigated the role of expatriates in controlling subsidiaries. It has been recognised that expatriates can form both direct and indirect means of control. In executing direct types of control, expatriates directly supervised decisions taken at subsidiaries. The study found that this role is particularly strong in MNEs from Asia-Pacific countries and German MNEs, and is much less important in subsidiaries of Anglo-Saxon MNEs. We found that subsidiaries of German MNEs experienced a very high level of control; indeed, the only control mechanism that German MNEs did not implement among subsidiaries was control by socialisation and networks. German and Japanese MNEs are perhaps more rooted in business systems concerned with the management of issues internationally than American or British companies. The second group reflected that Anglo-Saxon countries heavily used impersonal types of control mechanisms, specifically bureaucratic formalised control and output control. When we deconstructed the results for Europe, comparing German and British as a group to Oriental MNEs, reveals the latter as possessing greater overall control. With regard to output and bureaucratic control, we found that both US MNEs and those from the Middle East exercised greater control than Oriental MNEs. Headquarters can strategize to implement control by the informal and social means method by positioning a sizeable number of managers from the home country within the subsidiary. Indeed, our results revealed this as true. It seems that their presence has positive and significant effects on most levels of control: personal, output, bureaucratic and informal. Contrary to this, however, we found that the presence of a sizeable number of expatriates (as opposed to headquarters managers) leaded to greater autonomy in subsidiaries. In terms of strategy and structure, we indicated that the three distinct organisational models identified for MNEs could be recognised in our study. Control INFO was significantly, positively related to global strategy, multi-domestic and transnational strategy compared with PCC, BFC, and OUT control mechanism. Conversely, BFC had a significant, negative and weak relationship with global strategy and transnational strategy, and no relationship with multi-domestic strategy. In general however, we can deduce the existence of a tendency for global, transnational and multi-domestic MNEs to use indirect control mechanisms and informal control suited to their integrated organisational models to a larger extent. Our results confirmed previous studies in the field of organisation theory, in the sense that size is an important explanatory factor for differences in control mechanisms. In contrast to these studies, however, a dominant effect was found only for the indirect control mechanisms. Few detailed studies that have investigated the effect of size on the two indirect control mechanisms; in actuality, most previous studies have focused on the direct control mechanisms (personal centralised control and bureaucratic formalised control) only. As such, our study reconfirmed the importance of the variable size, but concluded that it is mainly associated with higher levels of indirect control. The age of the subsidiary does not seem to have a significant influence on the type of control mechanism that is exercised by headquarters towards a particular subsidiary. Our study investigated the importance of various MNE characteristics in an attempt to explain performance differences between MNEs. The advantage of this study is that many of the characteristics that have been identified in previous literature as being important factors influencing performance were included in our research design, in order for us to be able to answer the other research questions. This therefore allowed us to assess the relative importance levels of different variables in explaining performance differences between companies, such as: country of origin, industry, size, interdependence, local responsiveness, knowledge flows, and the strategy and structure of the MNEs.

This thesis proposes that feminist social and political theory adopt the epistemology inherent in Jurgen Habermas's communicative ethics in order to more coherently work toward the goal of freeing individuals from social oppression. This thesis first examines the fundamental differences that exist between the particular claims for knowledge made by the three major schools of feminist theory; the empirical feminists, the standpoint feminists, and those allied with postmodernism. After illuminating the specifics of these feminist claims, the conception of knowledge central to Habermas's thought is explored and shown to be split into three distinct realms; the objective, the social, and the subjective. It is shown that the three realms of Habermas's knowledge account for the underlying claims of the differing groups of feminist theory, and provide a basis for reconciling the differences between them. Habermas's objective realm of knowledge corresponds to the concerns of empirically oriented feminists. A need for an accurate description of the events and conditions of the actual world is shared by both, as is a trust in the human potential for grasping these objects and events accurately. Standpoint feminism's concern for interpersonal relations, accounting for the context of an individual's or group's existence, is reflected in the type of knowledge that Habermas considers social in nature. Habermas's conception of our capacity for social knowledge, which guides our actions with other human beings, is shown to be dependent upon both social existence and communication. Finally, Habermas acknowledges the human potential for critical knowledge to explain the individual's ability to differentiate herself from the group, a task which a postmodern feminism demands to avoid essentializing any aspect of women. If feminist theory is able to move beyond the entrenched differences that it now finds itself locked within, perhaps then it will be able to continue with the project shared with Habermas, that of providing a meaningful emancipation for human beings.

According to the classical consistency presupposition, contradictions have an explosive character: Whenever they are present in a theory, anything goes, and no sensible reasoning can thus take place. A logic is paraconsistent if it disallows such presupposition, and allows instead for some inconsistent yet non-trivial theories to make perfect sense. The Logics of Formal Inconsistency, LFIs, form a particularly expressive class of paraconsistent logics in which the metatheoretical notion of consistency can be internalized at the object-language level. As a consequence, the LFIs are able to recapture consistent reasoning by the addition of appropriate consistency assumptions. The present monograph introduces the LFIs and provides several illustrations of them and of their properties, showing that such logics constitute in fact the majority of interesting paraconsistent systems in the literature. Several ways of performing the recapture of consistent reasoning inside such inconsistent systems are also illustrated. In each case, interpretations in terms of many-valued, possible-translations, or modal semantics are provided, and the problems related to providing algebraic counterparts to such logics are surveyed. A formal abstract approach is proposed to all related definitions and an extended investigation is made into the logical principles and the positive and negative properties of negation.

What might it mean to attempt to figure theatre as thought? More specifically, what possible relations hold between theatre and epistemology - that area of philosophy concerned with theories of knowledge? This study is a series of cross-disciplinary engagements that seek to articulate some of the relations between theatre, performance, and epistemology, to investigate performance as a 'deployed logic' in relation to those disciplines concerned with discovering and generating knowledge. For some thinkers in the continental tradition, the very thought of writing about the relations between performance and the anachronistic; hasn't the idea of 'performance' undermined most of the central tenets of the discourse concerned with knowledge and the Real, with truth and falsity? This, of course, remains an open question, one pursued in this work. The thesis draws on a diverse series of wide-ranging examples in order to relate the inquiry to current work being done in philosophy and performance studies, but notes the theoretical incompleteness of studies relating theatre and performance to conceptions of knowledge.It attempts to fill a void in the literature by offering analyses that think the relations between dramatic and philosophical activity. In short, it hopes to re-open the dialogue between performance and epistemology by showing how philosophy regularly attempts to expunge its foundational elements from its imaginary. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis is motivated by my felt connection with the unnecessarily hungry peasants of the Majority World. The odyssey that results is portrayed as one of epistemic learning in which the meaning of participation is central. The first part (Chapters 1-4) introduces the philosophical understandings gained at the end of the research in order to assist the reader’s orientation at the beginning of the thesis. This explanation depends upon understanding the paradigmatic implications of Classical and Quantum Physics along with an autooethnographic approach. Using these concepts, I portray my experiences in agricultural development with peasants in the Solomon Islands and Mozambique as naïve systemic practice. This practice arises in response to the continual failure of contemporary development which I refer to as expat-centric development. I systemically reframe the categories of “expert” and “blueprint project” which become “expert and project with peasant.” The development that results I find to be easy and successful, yet it is ignored and undermined. This leads me to a watershed experience, which becomes Part 2 (Chapter 5) of the thesis.Within Part 3 I see the role of society’s institutions to replicate the mechanistic paradigm. Thus, in order to avoid the institutional entrapment that results from this, I see the need post-thesis, to participate in evolving new social structures that can replicate the paradigm of systemic participation. This will largely depend upon the willingness of society to engage with a cosmology of connectedness. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis is motivated by my felt connection with the unnecessarily hungry peasants of the Majority World. The odyssey that results is portrayed as one of epistemic learning in which the meaning of participation is central. The first part (Chapters 1-4) introduces the philosophical understandings gained at the end of the research in order to assist the reader’s orientation at the beginning of the thesis. This explanation depends upon understanding the paradigmatic implications of Classical and Quantum Physics along with an autooethnographic approach. Using these concepts, I portray my experiences in agricultural development with peasants in the Solomon Islands and Mozambique as naïve systemic practice. This practice arises in response to the continual failure of contemporary development which I refer to as expat-centric development. I systemically reframe the categories of “expert” and “blueprint project” which become “expert and project with peasant.” The development that results I find to be easy and successful, yet it is ignored and undermined. This leads me to a watershed experience, which becomes Part 2 (Chapter 5) of the thesis.Within Part 3 I see the role of society’s institutions to replicate the mechanistic paradigm. Thus, in order to avoid the institutional entrapment that results from this, I see the need post-thesis, to participate in evolving new social structures that can replicate the paradigm of systemic participation. This will largely depend upon the willingness of society to engage with a cosmology of connectedness. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas Christian University, 2007. / Title from dissertation title page (viewed Dec. 10, 2007). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.