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Humeans say that laws depend on their instances. Another way of saying this is that the instances explain the laws. However, laws are often used in science to help explain these same instances. If this is true it appears as though the instances help explain themselves, which would be a serious problem for the Humeans (Miller, 2015, pp. 1314-1317). In this essay I expand on a solution proposed by Miller (2015, pp. 1328-1331) that the laws are not explained by their instances but rather grounded by a set of global facts. I develop this into a new framework in which it would be expected for the laws to not be grounded by their instances. I call this framework conjunction monism since the core idea is a that conjunctions ground their conjuncts. I finish with a discussion about the compatibility of conjunction monism and Humeanism.

Thesis advisor: Ronald K. Tacelli / This dissertation arose from concerns that the prevalent philosophy of materialism which reduces everything to matter has inadvertently contributed to the ecological destruction of the planet, and an impoverished understanding of human nature. Conceptual arguments and empirical data cry out for a philosophy beyond materialism (or its current avatar Physicalism) that moves us beyond 17th century classical science, making use of 20th century quantum science to better understand our world. Such a new philosophy would embed a new scientific paradigm that incorporates both the first person point of view and the third person "no point of view."The main issue I engage in this dissertation is whether consciousness can be explained by Physicalism. While functionalism, the dominant theory of Physicalism, answers many questions related to consciousness, it leaves major ones unanswered. I offer a critique of Physicalism using conceptual arguments and empirical data encompassing what I call the "chemistry of attention." I also offer innovative proposals toward a philosophical approach I term "Aspect Monism" that builds on earlier monist philosophies (Spinoza) while incorporating dualistic features, suggesting that this new approach would better account for consciousness. The proximate history of Physicalism to either explain the mind away or reduce it to the brain from Behaviorism through Identity Theory to Functionalism is laid out as well as the difficulty in establishing the boundaries of Physicalism.The project utilizes conceptual arguments to critique Physicalism in three areas of concern: What is left out? What is assumed? What is causing methodological confusion? The areas of qualia, cognition, intentionality, meaning and personhood are left out. This is demonstrated, in part, by various thought experiments like the inverted spectrum argument, the Chinese nation argument, the zombies' argument, the knowledge argument and the Chinese room argument. The problem of causal closure of the physical is that which is assumed. The ambiguity with respect to method is that which causes confusion.Empirical data from the neurosciences (EEG, ERP, fMRI experiments during meditation; OCD and phobia treatment; placebo and nocebo effect) are used to critically analyze Physicalism with respect to mental states and causation and the analysis of such data points to a close relationship between attention and changes in the brain, and subsequently to the collapse of Physicalism into Epiphenomenalism. Such a metaphysical approach to consciousness is suggested from, and provides a home for, the neurophysical approaches to the origins of consciousness. I present a neuro-quantum perspective using Stapp and Penrose-Hameroff who suggest these origins via neuroscience and quantum physics.As we search for a new scientific paradigm and consequently a new metaphysics that takes into consideration the objective and the subjective, and the inner and the outer, a new philosophy and a new scientific paradigm which incorporates both the first person point of view and the third person "no point of view" data is the need of the hour. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

In this thesis I (1) identify some problems in the Popperian scientific method; (2) develop, as an alternative, and to a level of usability, a phenomenological method of knowing; (3) use this method to make a series of inferences about the nature of the human self; (4) compare and contrast my inferences with those of other scholars working on the same themes; and (5) let some of my inferences suggest ways of developing the method further. I show (1:1) how the scientific method is underpinned by a paradigm of ontic dualism; (1:2) how this paradigm has led to a certain conception of the human self; and (1:3) how this conception has led to the normalization of harmful ways of acting in the world, and thus to a planet made up of living beings who cannot find a steady fit with each other's life-ways. I develop an alternative method by building on the work of (2:1) Goethe, (2:2) Holdrege, (2:3) Ellis and (2:4) Heidegger. In essence this method consists of recalling and making inferences from one's experience. (3:1) I undertook a set of six activities (sometimes spoken of as 'Sufism'). (3:2) I try to understand my findings in the light of the ideas of four scholars: the teacher who leads these activities, Murshid Saadi, eleventhcentury polymath ibn Sina, anthropologist Tim Ingold and philosopher David Abram. (3:3) I make fifteen inferences about the human self, falling into seven themes: monism, mood, willing, perceiving, speaking, growing, and substantiveness. (4) Comparing and contrasting my conclusions with those of other scholars suggests that they are valid. (5) I develop the method further by incorporating into it the delineation of classes of phenomena and the delineation of patterns of phenomenal change. I end by discussing some implications for ethical human life-ways.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1993. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-129).

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur Ivar Lo-Johansson menar att synen på uppfostran reglerar hur de ungas sexualitet formas, med utgångspunkt i gestaltningen av huvudpersonens utveckling i romanen Geniet. Uppsatsen analyserar hur denna uppfostran utifrån en sexualmoralisk syn på onani och avhållsamhet enligt Lo-Johansson påverkar individens identitet till sexuell isolering, ensamhet och jag-dyrkan. Ett perspektiv han argumenterar för utifrån sin sexualteori i boken Monism.Det underlag som används för att analysera sexualitet och identitetsskapande utifrån ett teoretiskt perspektiv är Michel Foucaults Sexualitetens historia. 1. Viljan att veta. Distinktion mellan sex och sexualitet samt pedagogiseringen av barnets kön är perspektiv som uppmärksammas. Freuds texter om kön, onani, kärlek och sexualitet i Sexualiteten tas med utifrån Lo-Johanssons påstådda påverkan av psykoanalys och utifrån de motiv som behandlas i analysen. Angående onanin som en fråga i sig och kopplad till en historisk diskurs hänvisas till Thomas W. Laqueurs Solitary Sex, A Cultural History of Masturbation.Analysens huvudsakliga metod består i en närläsning av Geniet. Det görs också en parallell läsning av Lo-Johanssons essäsamling Monism för att analysera hans gestaltning av Geniets huvudperson i förhållande till hans framställning om sin sexualteori om den sexuella monismen.Analysen visar att Lo-Johanssons syfte med Geniet inte väckte de frågor han avsåg. Ungdomarna som var med kände inte igen sig. Lo-Johanssons egen pubertet kom att ljuda i bakgrunden som ett långt utdraget personligt ackord. Det som kom att diskuteras var hans kvinnosyn, att man måste släppa till flickorna, mer än den anklagelse mot uppfostran han hade i fokus. Han tog en extrem individ – med narcissistiska problem- som utgångspunkt för en generell samhällsfråga som fick den frågan att komma i skymundan. Sexualteorin han förespråkade fick inget fotfäste.

Summary: Kritika monismu v díle Karla Statečného The Critique of Monism in the Work of Karel Statečný Michal Vejvoda The dissertation, ''The Critique of Monism in the work of Karel Statečný'', has led to a systematic point view on the issue of monism and its outline in Karel Statečný's work. It was found out, that Karel Statečný discerned a danger in this point of view, not only for the Church and the Christianity, but also for the whole society. The biggest danger of the monistic teaching lies in the fact, that the monistic principle is based on human nature. Karel Statečný realizes, that monistic tendency is deeply rooted in human nature, and thus is also objectively correct. With regards to Karel Statečný's analysis on monistic teaching, was discerned its danger to human religious sentiments, particularly in ethics: emptying of religion, in the case of removing of the element the personal God. Further on was found out, that monistical issues elaborated by Karel Statečný, speaks also today, because this monistic tendency is natural to human thinking. Pantheism - a belief in impersonal God, is also widespread, and this have a connection with spiritual instability and empty ethics. Therefore, the study of former monistic endeavors, may be useful to contemporary theology, theological philosophy and ethics....

Panpsychism, the view that fundamental physical entities are basic phenomenal subjects, is motivated by a commitment to explaining human subjects of experience, as well as by a rejection of the possibility that phenomenal properties are arbitrarily necessitated – human subjects of experience are thought to only be possible if prefigured by more basic phenomenal subjecthood. In this paper I will consider autopoietic enactivism as an alternative to panpsychism when it comes to explaining human subjects of experience on the basis of subjective precursors. Both of the theories theorise possible subjective precursors but panpsychism (which will be referred to as panphenomenal monism) is mostly based on speculative, unobservable, fundamental phenomenal subjecthood. Autopoietic enactivism does not require that there is fundamental phenomenal subjecthood. Instead it describes emergent individuals with subjective behaviour at the biological level. This involves a form of bodily subjecthood that may be pre-phenomenal. If autopoietic enactivism involves describing phenomenal subjecthood as possible on the basis of bodily subjecthood, it is not describing an arbitrary but an intelligible necessitation, because phenomenal subjecthood, then, is understandable on the basis of some other subjecthood. However, that other subjecthood is not fundamental. Since autopoietic enactivism does not require fundamental phenomenal subjecthood it is compatible with the NFM (The No Fundamental Mentality Constraint) which means that it is seamlessly compatible with a form of physicalism that panpsychism is not compatible with. The fundamental question that panpsychists start out with is The Hard Problem of Consciousness, a version of the problem of experience that may contain an unnecessarily wide, or even insurmountable, gap between two types of mutually exclusive properties – phenomenal and physical properties. Autopoietic enactivism has a corresponding problem that is tied to a common denominator between phenomenal and physical properties, namely biological life. The enactivist's Body-Body Problem involves an explanatory gap between the living body and the lived body. Since the phenomenal and the physical are united in (at least some) biological life, life is a relevant starting point for investigation regarding the problem of consciousness. I will argue that autopoietic enactivism offers a way of understanding the intelligible necessitation of the known subjects of experience on the basis of emergent, and not necessarily fundamental, subjective precursors. Moreover, I will briefly show how autopoietic enactivism also is compatible with panprotopsychism, a view closely related to panpsychism. My argument in favor of autopoietic enactivism, and against the need for fundamental phenomenal subjecthood, may lead undecided pan(proto)psychists to choose panprotopsychism over panpsychism.

The present study reconstructs psychological, linguistic and ontological aspects of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy in the light of Brentano’s theory of intentionality. Brentano used intentionality as a psychological term to denote the ‘mental’ as opposed to the ‘natural’. Later, with Meinong, intentionality took an ontological commitment to assenting that ‘there are things that do not exist’. The chapters that discuss Ṣadrā’s philosophy reflect the two aspects with an investigation for the production process of intentional objects and an investigation of the status of these objects in ontology. The main aim of the research is to give an internalist and monist account for the nature of intentionality demonstrating an alternative approach to the concepts of existence and the soul. Ontologically, there is only one reality (existence) and nothing is left outside it. Accordingly, intentional objects are mental beings that are at a lower level of existence (wujūd ẓillī). The principles behind the monist ontology are: first, the gradational ontology (tashkīk) that all things are determined beings (mutamayyiz) and they are manifestations of a single reality at different levels of intensity (mutashakkik), and, second, the simplicity principle (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa) in which existence is a simple reality that comprehends all beings whilst being the principle of multiplicity at the same time. Accordingly intentional objects are a level of existence, and share same reality. Epistemologically, all knowledge processes including external senses are regarded as internal processes in which the causal effect of the extra-mental object is reduced to being an accidental preparatory tool and faculties for the soul. Perception is always completed with the touch of imagination and the real object of perception is internally created. The soul is not the receiver of forms, but is the active agent. Moreover, the soul undergoes substantial change as the objects are being produced. The soul is then not a container of forms. It is rather the case that the forms themselves construct the soul. The last point is that knowledge is a mode of existence. This mode of being (knowledge) indeed is the very existence of the human soul. In this explanation, the soul is neither material nor immaterial per se: the soul starts her journey as a material substance and becomes more delicate and immaterial through her journey. The soul’s journey is made possible with the preparatory role of the processes of perception. Intentionality is soul’s action of creating mental forms. The products are identical to soul since soul and knowledge are identical. Consequently, intentional objects are dependent on the soul in their presence and creation.

Esta tese tem como objetivo estudar a paraconsistentização de lógicas, que consiste em encontrar, para uma dada lógica, sua contraparte paraconsistente. A estratégia geral utilizada para tal tarefa é: ao encontrar premissas inconsistentes, faça inferências a partir de seus subconjuntos consistentes. Para isso, foram desenvolvidos dois métodos de paraconsistentização. O primeiro consiste na utilização do arcabouço teórico da Teoria de Categorias, enquanto que o segundo faz uso da teoria da prova e da noção de estruturas valorativas. Após a apresentação dos métodos, algumas propriedades formais de ambas as propostas foram investigadas. Em particular, provou-se que a paraconsistentização preserva correção e completude, isto é, se a lógica inicial for correta e completa, sua contraparte paraconsistente também o será. Também foram estabelecidas as condições suficientes que uma lógica deve satisfazer para poder ser paraconsistentizada. A partir destes resultados, os dois métodos propostos foram comparados com outras abordagens desenvolvidas para raciocinar a partir de conjuntos inconsistentes. Por fim, a tese analisa o debate entre pluralismo e monismo lógico investigando, especificamente, as contribuições da paraconsistentização para tal discussão. / This thesis aims to study the paraconsistentization of logics, which consists in finding, for a given logic, its paraconsistent counterpart. The general strategy used for this task is the following: when finding inconsistent premises, one must draw inferences from its consistent subsets. For this, two methods of paraconsistentization were developed. The first consists in using the framework of Category Theory, while the second one makes use of proof theory and the notion of valuation structure. After their presentation, some formal properties of both proposals were investigated. In particular, it was proved that paraconsistentization preserves soundness and completeness, that is, if the initial logic is sound and complete, its paraconsistent counterpart will also be. The sufficient conditions that a logic must satisfy in order for it to be paraconsistentized were also established. From these results, the two proposed methods were compared with other approaches developed to reason from inconsistent sets. Finally, the thesis analyses the debate between pluralism and logical monism investigating, specifically, the contributions of paraconsistentization to this discussion.