Inaug.-Diss.--Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster. / Bibliography: p. 199-203.

Diss.--Universität Hamburg. / Bibliography: p. 176-180.

Inaug.--diss.--Berlin. / "Disseratio inauguralis philosophica quam consensu et auctoritate amplissimi philosophorum ordinis ind Alma Litterarum Universitate Friderica Guilelma pro summiis in philosophia honoribus rite sibi concedendis die XXXI m. Martii a. MDCCCXLVI." Vita.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 248 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 244-248). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 223-230). Also available in electronic version.

This dissertation presents and responds to the following problem. For Kant a field of enquiry can be a science only if it is systematic. Most sciences achieve systematicity through having a unified content and method. Physics, for example, has a unified content, as it is the science of matter in motion, and a unified method because all claims in physics must be verified through empirical testing. In order for metaphysics to be a science it also must be systematic. However, metaphysics cannot have a unified content or method because metaphysicians lack a positive conception of what its content and method are. On Kant's account, metaphysicians can say with certainty what metaphysics does not study and what methods it cannot use, but never how it should proceed. Without unified content and method systematicity can only be guaranteed by some either means, namely, completeness. Without completeness metaphysics cannot have systematicity and every science must be systematic. Completeness can only be achieved if we severely limit the scope of metaphysics so that it contains only the conditions for the possibility of experience. This dissertation defends the claims made about the centrality of completeness in understanding Kant's conception of metaphysics as a science in two ways. First, the first two chapters point to a substantial body of textual evidence that supports the idea that Kant was directly concerned about the notion of completeness and links it to his conception of metaphysics as a science. Chapters 3 and 4 consider some possible objections to thinking that metaphysics as a science can be complete, giving special consideration to Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Chapter 5 explains why, if this position is as clear as this dissertation has argued, previous scholars have failed to acknowledge it. Giving a full answer to this question requires considering the general neglect of the "Doctrine of Method" section of Kant's primary theoretical text, The Critique of Pure Reason. The Doctrine of Method contains many of the passages which most directly support my thesis. Chapter 6 explains why scholars have ignored this important passage and argues that they should not continue to do so.

There is a need to distinguish two questions in the philosophy of persons. One of these is the factual question of identity. This is the question of the conditions of personal identity over time. The other is the first person question of survival. This can be expressed as, "Under which circumstances should I consider a person at another time to be my survivor, who I have reason to care about just as much if he were me?" This second question does not presuppose that the survivor is numerically identical with her predecessor and is the question considered in this thesis. Answering this question requires us to resolve the tension in our concept of a person between, on the one hand, the view of persons as purely physical beings, no more than the sum of their particular parts, bound to the here and now, and on the other hand, as somehow transcendent, beings who exist beyond the here and now. The conception built upon is that offered by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. Two errors in Parfit's account are explained and amendments suggested. The first is Parfit's explanation of the unity of a mental life over time in terms of connectedness and continuity between individual, independent thoughts, and secondly his account of connectedness and continuity itself. I suggest that psychological connectedness and continuity must be between persons-at-a-time, not individual thoughts, and that a unified mental life over time is not just a product of enough connections, as Parfit argues, but is determined by the kind of connectedness there is.

This thesis examines the idea that when a physical theory contains symmetries, the theory should be interpreted in such a way that symmetry-related models represent the same physical state of affairs. It argues that we can best do so by drawing on analogies to ideas in philosophy of logic and language: specifically, by thinking of symmetries as a means of translating a theory into itself. It consists of six chapters, together with an introduction and conclusion. In Chapter 1, I set up the main ideas needed to more precisely frame the question at hand: namely, the notions of symmetry, interpretation, and possibility. I make some remarks about how I take these to be connected. In Chapter 2, I argue that isomorphic models should be interpreted as equivalent. After giving some motivations for doing so, I consider the main obstruction: how to provide an account of de re modality. I review how counterpart theory may be used to overcome this obstruction, and clarify how counterpart theory relates to other positions in the debate over modality de re. In Chapter 3, I show that the metaphysical debate over quidditism can be made precise by drawing on notions of translation from model theory, and argue in favour of an anti-quidditist attitude towards interpreting theories. I then consider the special case of translating a theory into itself: how such a theory should be interpreted, and what reformulations of the theory such an interpretation suggests. In Chapter 4, I turn my attention to physics. I define the notion of an internal symmetry for a theory, and argue that they may be regarded as translations from a theory into itself (in the sense of Chapter 3); and, hence, that symmetry-related models should be interpreted as equivalent. Drawing on the analogy further, I look at how the theory may be reformulated to take this interpretation into account. In Chapter 5, I look at external symmetries. I argue, drawing on ideas from Chapters 2 and 3, that models related by external symmetries should also be interpreted as equivalent. I discuss how implementing this interpretational lesson bears on finding the spacetime structure appropriate to a theory. In Chapter 6, I consider a specific external symmetry: the accelerative symmetry of Newtonian gravitation. I show that one can reformulate the theory to take this into account, setting gravitation on a spacetime structure that has absolute rotation but no absolute acceleration.

<p> Places are expressive, dynamic, and responsive beings voicing themselves at different scales of emergence. Placefields are the sites of research at the complex nexus of peoples, cultures, geography, experience, mythology, and place history in terrapsychology. Children are open and receptive to these expressive qualities of place, understanding these place emanations through the context provided to them by place-based educators and other adults. This four-month study at Lowell National Historical Park utilized terrapsychological inquiry to explore youth connection to the historic industrial placefield of Lowell, Massachusetts as experienced by learners and educators, reproduced through youth placefield encounters, and iterated through self, community, and as culture across scales. The arts-based research method of terrain weaving empowered this research to connect with complex pattern languages of Lowell, surfacing the symbolic repertoire of place, the somatic and psychological components of youth place encounter, the deep patterns of place that rise through the researcher, and the expansive states of consciousness that are catalyzed through complex place relationships. The difficult histories placefields perform reproduce their traumatic and historic woundings in the visiting psyche. At the same time, the underlying resilience, strengths, and gifts of places with difficult histories are vital assets to be liberated. The experiential and embodied elements of field trips make them powerful intersections for troubling the ways historic narratives are constructed. This research concludes it is possible to radically redesign field trips and recontextualize histories to provide a nourishing, regenerative place encounter by adopting complex, expansive, and agential understandings of place.</p><p>

M.A.