After a hundred years, psychical research (and experimental parapsychology) are still regarded as pseudosciences. Despite sceptical attacks, however, work continues: the results cannot be lightly dismissed. Evaluation of this work demands philosophical attention, since there are large metaphysical assumptions made, and the experimental results are vulnerable to logical criticism. The supposed kinds of paranormal phenomena are anatomized, and the current terminology criticized. Broad's basic limiting principles are examined, and the extent to which psychical research might threaten conventional science is considered. The metaphysical foundations of psychical research are examined. Psychical research takes a dualist view of human beings, although its experiments are behavioristic. Survival of death is assumed to be a matter susceptible to empirical verification. These assumptions are critically examined. I argue that ESP neither gives us knowledge, nor is it a form of perception. Although psychical researchers interpret their results in causal terms, this is illegitimate. Backwards causation, therefore, need not be canvassed as an explanation. As the basis for a scientific discipline, spontaneous cases are inadequate, as they involve underdescription (lack of detail) and overdescription (tendentious exaggeration). Observational cases, given the absence of theoretical explanations, and. the prevalence of fraud, also fail as science. Hume's arguments on testimony, and modern versions of them, are considered. Experimental parapsychology fails because ESP and PK seem to occur without conscious awareness or significant physiological signs, and in a way that transcends space and time. There is thus no way that science can gain a grip on them. Without a theory and a mechanism, there is nothing but a series of statistical quirks. The proposed models do not mesh in with the experimental results. Paranormal forces, if they existed, might contaminate all scientific work, and no one could ever know. Taken on its own terms, psychical research is impotent to undertake the task it has set itself.

It was then that I decided to investigate how contemporary forms of metaphysical imaging have evolved formally and stylistically. I began to question how such approaches might be informed by current philosophical thought, given that many contemporary theorists have adopted a sceptical view towards metaphysical discourse. This point of contention presented me with the initial challenge of finding an artist whose exploration of metaphysical content is supported by topical philosophical thought. I intended this inquiry to serve as a basis from which to develop my own approach to imaging metaphysical content and to situate it within the context of contemporary thought.

<p> Leibniz makes substantive use of harmony and metaphysical perfection, but he very rarely offers more than a brief gloss in direct explanation of these terms. I argue that they name the same fundamental property. The definition of metaphysical perfection (hereafter, "perfection") as unity-in-variety misleads if taken as a reduction of perfection to separately necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for anything to enjoy perfection. The definition of harmony in terms of intelligibility leads to the same underlying notion, for intelligibility is defined in terms of unity and variety.</p><p> Chapter 1 introduces the tension between Leibniz's substantive use of perfection and his demand that it meet a high standard of intelligibility. Chapter 2 argues that there is no satisfactory account of compossibility in the literature because each of the viable proposals misunderstands the role of perfection. The current dispute rests in a disagreement about the best reductive account of perfection: either to sheer variety, or to variety and unity as independently intelligible but inversely proportional criteria for perfection. Either way, incompossibility relations become externally applied limits on God's will to maximize the variety of existing substances. Leibniz rejects all such external limits. I propose a new solution, in which two possibles are compossible if and only if they are jointly thinkable, that is, if they are members of an ideal unity. This involves a distinction between the variety that does contribute to unity and the variety that does not&mdash;and this distinction requires that we already have some notion of perfection prior to the appeal to variety.</p><p> Chapter 3 develops this account of perfection and incompossibility further, by introducing another puzzle God aims to create the most perfect world, but worlds are aggregates and aggregates seem to rank too low in Leibniz's ontology to explain God's aim. What is the world that God would care for it? God, being wise, does not and would not will multiple times in creating. Rather, God creates multiple substances through a single act of will. Acts of creative will, though, are individuated by the agent's concept of the object. This suggests that groups of substances are unified into worlds by God's intellect thinking of their many essences under a single idea. This is Leibniz's limited Spinozism: he is a metaphysical atomist about existing things, but a holist about the ideal and its value.</p><p> Chapters 4 and 5 tell the story of how Leibniz came to these views. The narrative is helpful in part because it sheds some light on Leibniz's motivations. Also, I argue that the mistakes common to recent approaches to compossibility have textual support only from premature versions of Leibniz's account of perfection, versions Leibniz rejected in part because they generate the problems discussed in Chapters 2 and 3.</p><p> Chapter 4 explores Leibniz's transition to philosophical maturity in the later 167os. He gave priority to the divine intellect throughout his career, but in the Paris Period, he left no work for the will at all: to exist is to be harmonious, and the existence of finite things depends directly on the divine intellect. This theory had theodicean advantages, but it also led to a necessitarianism just as absolute as Spinoza's. After studying Spinoza and leaving Paris, Leibniz placed the divine will between existence and harmony, or perfection. Perfection and harmony were now associated with God's ideas; coming to exist required, in addition, an act of God's will.</p><p> Having associated harmony with the possibles in God's mind, Leibniz now needed to explain why God does not maximize perfection by creating every substance. Chapter 5 deals with the gradual development after 1678, as Leibniz worked out how to determine the joint value of many independent substances. Just as previously he had separated existence from harmony while retaining a close connection between the two, the mature Leibniz distinguished harmony from the possible substances in God's mind. Harmony and perfection, on this final account, belong even to aggregates, which count as unities thanks only to their relation to a mind. With this in hand, Leibniz was finally in a position to argue that God leaves some possibles uncreated in order the maximize the perfection of what God does create.</p><p> Leibniz defended his commitment to a harmoniously limited, intelligible world by gradually distinguishing perfection from existence and from substantiality. Likewise, we profit by distinguishing Leibnizian perfection from (apparently) more accessible notions.</p>

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<p> While the field of leadership can trace its roots to Plato, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli among many others, it has become a focus of contemporary academic studies in the last 50 to 75 years. And while spirituality can trace its origins to Muhammad, Jesus and Buddha, the exploration of the nexus of leadership and spirituality is much more recent and as a result, a limited body of knowledge exists and thus, is ripe for study.</p><p> Many challenges exist, including the fact that the study of leadership is a multidisciplinary academic field that includes a myriad of topics from a vast array of disciplines and spirituality, too, is extraordinarily diverse. This study explored a set of theories and tools to enable leaders to develop and support qualities in themselves and in those with whom they work and interact. Specifically, this work is a qualitative study exploring the nexus of leadership and spirituality, which addresses the gap in the literature that considers this intersection, as evidenced by the Venn diagram that includes leadership, spirituality, and thinking and behavioral attributes.</p><p> While a qualitative study, the quantitative element used is Emergenetics, a 30-year-old psychometric tool that looks at the four thinking attributes of analytical, structural, conceptual and social and the three behaviors of expressiveness, assertiveness and flexibility. With more than 630,000 profiles completed in 21 languages by people around the world, the universe for this study consisted of 14 one-to-one interviews and two focus groups of 14 people each, one in person and one online. The myriad of faith traditions with which the participants identified in their youth is provided in Table 2. With regard to the tradition with which participants identify today, of the 42 participants, 24 identify as Science of Mind/Religious Science and 18 identify with other faith traditions or no faith tradition.</p><p> The primary question was does spirituality influence leaders' thinking and behaviors. The secondary questions included an exploration around in what ways spirituality influences thinking and behaviors. It also explored the questions as to if spirituality informs the ways leaders challenge things in their organizations and if acknowledging one's spirituality publically helps or hinders building effective teams.</p><p> The highlights of the research include the finding that spirituality does indeed influence everything a leader does and is, whether thinking and behavior attributes and how a leader questions things. As well, while publicly acknowledging one's spirituality is thought to be positive, there are some confounding circumstances and those ideas are also presented.</p><p> The study also includes the group Emergenetics profiles for the two focus groups and all of the individual interviews as one profile, respectively, with an explanation as to how that informed the research.</p><p> Finally, the implications of this research to the study of leadership, the study of spirituality and leadership and the use of the Emergenetics tool in such work is explored.</p>

Two tenets associated with major strands of classical Christian orthodoxy assert both that God is meticulously provident and that humans have libertarian free will. On this view, God's meticulous providence is, in part, a function of His essential omniscience. God, on this view, is said to be all knowing. Classically, this has been construed to mean that God is infallible and that God exhaustively knows every detail of the past, present, and the future. But if God infallibly knew, in the past, what we would do in the future, then it looks like there may be a conflict with libertarian free will, at least insofar libertarian free will has traditionally been understood as the ability to do otherwise. It is my aim to provide a slightly new solution to this longstanding and deeply perplexing problem. In Chapter 1, I will delineate and attempt to motivate what I will call, the Problem of Theological Fatalism. I will then describe a very recent solution that has attracted many philosophers in recent years: Open Theism. I will then argue that, although the open theists' challenge to more traditional solutions is formidable, the case for Open Theism is hardly decisive. In Chapter 2 I will survey two historically significant responses to the Problem of Theological Fatalism. The first response is known as the Boethian solution that attempts to leverage the notion of God's alleged atemporality to avoid complications with the necessity of the past. Although this view has a number of able defenders, I ultimately reject Boethianism due to worries about the necessity of eternity. I then turn to the second historically significant solution that has resurfaced in recent decades, the Ockhamist Solution. This solution relies on distinguishing between facts that are in part about the past and facts that are strictly about the past in order to show that God's past beliefs are not saddled with the necessity of the past. Chapter 3, however, is a detailed analysis of the Molinist solution. Here, I raise and respond to the most pressing objections to Molinism, but insist on a key revision to standard Molinism. I argue that God does have Middle Knowledge, but I reject the common Molinist claim that we have counterfactual power over God's past infallible beliefs. Thus, I conclude that God's foreknowledge is incompatible with libertarian free will as historically conceived. From there, I conclude in Chapter 4 by attempting to motivate a source-incompatibilist view of human free will that preserves a strong sense of moral responsibility. I argue that the conjunction of Modified Molinism and source-incompatibilism yields a philosophically tenable and theologically satisfying resolution to the Problem of Theological Fatalism. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2017. / March 20, 2017. / foreknowledge, free will, incompatibilism, molinism, sourcehood / Includes bibliographical references. / David McNaughton, Professor Directing Dissertation; Philip Bowers, University Representative; Alfred Mele, Committee Member; John Roberts, Committee Member.

archives@tulane.edu / The most commonly ignored doctrine in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is his defense of his own critical methodology. This dissertation analyzes Kant’s statements on method in the “Discipline of Pure Reason” and a series of lectures from the 1760s and 1770s to prepare the way for a reinterpretation of the argumentative strategy of the Critique and its emancipatory aims. Reconsidering its argumentative strategy also requires reconsidering its substantive claims and achievements. “Discipline” is Kant’s name for the method that elevates the natural predisposition to metaphysics (“metaphysica naturalis”) to the secure status of science (“metaphysica generalis”) because the discipline accounts for the inescapable historicity of pure reason, achieving a revolution in rational history by making use of that historicity while eliminating its worst consequences. After disciplining the tumultuous unrest Kant finds everywhere in reason’s historical search for self- knowledge, reason can finally enter a period of “perpetual peace in philosophy.” Given Kant’s reservations about political revolution, this dissertation asks how the revolutionary turn in rational history is meant to enable peace. After Kant makes headway on the question of reason’s end by considering the dispute between ancient and modern philosophy, he considers the aprioricity of space, time, and the categories from a similarly historical perspective. This dissertation argues that Kantian reason is historical in such a way that it requires the negative legislation of critical discipline to reach the status of science, a result that contributes to the discussion about Kant’s thoughts on revolution. / 1 / Zachary Calhoun