Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-97).

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1998. / This is an electronic reproduction of TREN, #090-0036. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-97).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pittsburgh, 1986. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-236).

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1984. / Bibliography: leaves 94-96.

In this thesis, I analyze the classical tripartite definition of knowledge. According to this definition there are three conditions for a knowledge claim to arise, namely, belief, truth and justification conditions. The main problem with this definition is even if these three conditions are satisfied one may not know a proposition p because of the fact that the justification of the proposition p may not be relevant in showing that p is true. Therefore, my primary purpose is to establish a strong conceptual connection between justification and truth conditions. To realize this, first, I defend a three-way interrelation between these three conditions. Second, I inquire as to which kind of justification should lead us to which kind of truth. To answer to this question, I postulate three kinds of realities, namely, Subjective Reality, Inter-Subjective Reality, and Allegedly Pure Reality. Furthermore, I re-define the justification condition in such way that there is a kind of whole justification and it requires both internal and external justification. According to this conception of reality and re-definition of justification there already exists a strong conceptual connection between internal justification and Subjective Reality which is completely subject-relative. And I defend the existence of such a connection also between the whole justification and Inter-Subjective Reality. Finally, I argue that no conception of justification can lead us to an Allegedly Pure Reality that the hardest version of skepticism claims to exist.

The aim of this study is to examine the relation between Nietzsche&rsquo / s perspectivism and his doctrine of the will to power and to show that perspectivism is almost a direct and natural consequence of the doctrine of the will to power. Without exploring the doctrine, it is not possible to understand what Nietzsche&rsquo / s perspectivism is and what he trying to do by proposing it as an alternative to traditional epistemology. To this aim, firstly, Nietzsche&rsquo / s doctrine of the will to power is explained in detail. Next, in order to provide a deeper understanding of the doctrine, its relation with Darwinism and the claims which say that it is a metaphysical principle are analyzed. Afterwards, Nietzsche&rsquo / s construction of the world as becoming out of will to power is investigated. Nietzsche&rsquo / s conception of interpretation as power struggle and its role in perspectivism explained. Then, how Nietzsche&rsquo / s construction of the world as becoming and his concept of interpretation as power struggle emerge as perspectivism is explained. After that, in order to present the differences between Nietzsche&rsquo / s perspectivism and traditional understanding of epistemology, Nietzsche&rsquo / s critiques of some of the fundamental assumptions of traditional epistemology, i.e., causality, logic, and subject-object and apparent-real world distinctions, are investigated. Finally, Nietzsche&rsquo / s understanding of truth based on his perspectivism is inquired. Its relation with correspondence, pragmatic and coherence theories of truth is explored to show that Nietzsche&rsquo / s understanding of truth could not be comprehended through these theories. Consequently, it is claimed that the tendency to attribute a truth theory to Nietzsche&rsquo / s perspectivism, which is prevalent in the current Nietzsche studies, stems from commentator&rsquo / s, consciously or unconsciously, ignoring of the relation between his perspectivism and his doctrine of the will to power.

Habilitationsschrift--Mannheim. / Includes indexes. Bibliography: p. [198]-205.

"At Face Value: Investigating Perception through Portraiture" is a body of work that examines how people process their perception in imagery. The Deadpan Aesthetic, photographic truth and American identity are discussed, as well as the amount of influence a photographer has in his work. Since perception is defined as an understanding of setting via the senses, I hope to challenge viewers by employing strategies to destabilize the viewer's reception of my photographs.

A Sceptical Aesthetics of Existence: The Case of Michel Foucault Emmanouil Simos (Hughes Hall) Michel Foucault's genealogical investigations constitute a specific historical discourse that challenges the metaphysical hypostatisation of concepts and methodological approaches as unique devices for tracking metaphysically objective truths. Foucault's notion of aesthetics of existence, his elaboration of the ancient conceptualisation of ethics as an 'art of living' (a technē tou biou), along with a series of interconnected notions (such as the care of the self) that he developed in his later work, have a triple aspect. First, these notions are constitutive parts of his later genealogies of subjectivity. Second, they show that Foucault contemplates the possibility of understanding ethics differently, opposed to, for example, the traditional Kantian conceptualisation of morality: he envisages ethics in terms of self-fashioning, of aesthetic transformation, of turning one's life into a work of art. Third, Foucault employs these notions in self-referential way: they are considered to describe his own genealogical work. This thesis attempts to show two things. First, I defend the idea that the notion of aesthetics of existence was already present in a constitutive way from the beginning of his work, and, specifically, I argue that it can be traced in earlier moments of his work. Second, I defend the idea that this notion of aesthetics of existence is best understood in terms of the sceptical stance of Sextus Empiricus. It describes an ethics of critique of metaphysics that can be understood as a nominalist, contextualist, and particularist stance. The first chapter discusses Foucault's late genealogy of the subject. It formulates the interpretative framework within which Foucault's own conceptualisation of the aesthetics of existence can be understood as a sceptical stance, itself conceived as nominalist, contextualist and particularist. As the practice of an aesthetics of existence is not abstract and ahistorical but the engagement with the specific historical circumstances within which this practice is undertaken, the second chapter reconstructs the intellectual context from which Foucault's thought has emerged (Heidegger, Blanchot, and Nietzsche). The third chapter discusses representative examples of different periods of Foucault's thought -such as the "Introduction" to Binswanger's "Traum und Existenz" (1954), Histoire de la folie (1961), and Histoire de la sexualité I. La volonté de savoir (1976)- and shows in which way they constitute concrete instantiations of his sceptical aesthetics of existence. The thesis concludes with responses to a number of objections to the sceptical stance here defended.