Thesis advisor: Christopher Kelly / The question my dissertation addresses is the relationship between human passions and politics. It attempts to try to understand whether or not there is a standard in nature for judging how human passions ought to be ordered, if at all, taking as guides Montesquieu and Rousseau. I try to see if we can know this standard by reason, and if so, how? And I try to understand whether or not any natural passions might be preserved and ordered well in society. In addition, I try to investigate how society, or various forms of government, modify or transform the natural passions, for good and ill. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu produces an ambitious yet politically practical vision of the best form of government. After evaluating and rejecting ancient republics animated by political virtue, monarchies animated by honor, and despotisms animated by fear as possible candidates for the best form of government, Montesquieu thinks he has found the best form of government in the modern English form of liberal commercial republicanism, rooted in political freedom, commerce, and a moderate and tolerant if diluted form of religion, which might triumph over the globe as the final rational and most humanly satisfying form of government. And according to Montesquieu, the principles of the modern commercial republic adhere to the political standards that have been rationally discovered through the final and correct understanding of men’s passions in the state of nature. Against this confident assertion and the ambitious scope of Montesquieu’s goals, nothing less than universal peace and prosperity, and the apparently true knowledge of the best form of government, Rousseau launches a no less ambitious critique of the early modern vision, casting doubt on its political feasibility, and on its awareness of the true core of human nature and happiness. Rousseau ultimately thinks that we cannot order the passions to create a best and enduring government, since human self-interest, irrationality, and corrupt social passions ultimately tend toward oppression, despotism, and universal misery. And according to Rousseau a return to nature is for virtually everyone impossible. I consider Rousseau’s account of the same passions that Montesquieu evaluates, which he examines primarily in the Second Discourse, Emile, Considerations on the Government of Poland, and Political Economy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

It is often supposed that we can make progress understanding singular thought about objects by claiming that thinkers use ‘mental files’. However, the proposal is rarely subject to sustained critical evaluation. This thesis aims to clarify and critique the claim that thinkers use mental files. In my introductory first chapter, I motivate my subsequent discussion by introducing the claim that thinkers deploy modes of presentation in their thought about objects, and lay out some of my assumptions and terminology. In the second chapter, I introduce mental files, responding to the somewhat fragmented files literature by setting out a core account of files, and outlining different ways of implementing the claim that thinkers use mental files. I highlight pressing questions about the synchronic and diachronic individuation conditions for files. In chapters three and four, I explore whether ‘de jure coreference’ can be used to give synchronic individuation conditions on mental files. I explore existing characterisations of de jure coreference before presenting my own, but conclude that de jure coreference does not give a useful account of the synchronic individuation conditions on files. In chapter five, I consider the proposal that thinkers must sometimes trade on the coreference of their mental representations, and argue that we can give synchronic individuation conditions on files in terms of trading on coreference. In chapter six, I bring together the account of files developed so far, compare it to the most developed theory of mental files published to date, and defend my account from the objection that it is circular. In chapter seven, I explore routes for giving diachronic individuation conditions on mental files. In my concluding chapter, I distinguish the core account of files from the idea that the file metaphor should be taken seriously. I suggest that my investigation of the consequences of the core account has shown that the file metaphor is unhelpful, and I outline reasons to exercise caution when using ‘files’ terminology.

Empirical educational research enjoys a methodological and theoretical debate that is characterized by a number of unresolved and lively debated controversies. This compilation thesis is an attempt to contribute to this debate using the toolbox of philosophy of science. The thesis consists of an introductory chapter and four essays. In the introductory chapter I identify three methodological and theoretical controversies that are discussed within the field of educational research. These are: 1) the controversy concerning the scientific status of educational research; 2) the controversy between cognitive and sociocultural theories of learning; and, 3) the controversy between realist and constructionist interpretations of theories of learning. I provide in the essays a critical assessment of the claims behind each of these controversies, and argue for an alternative reconstruction of these issues. In Essay I, I criticize a view about the interpretation of human action, labeled in the text as interpretivism. This view posits a sharp separation between the natural and social sciences, to the effect that the methods of the latter cannot be applied to the former. The first controversy seems to rest on this position. As I argue, the arguments in support of interpretivism are contradicted by actual research practice. I conclude that the interpretivistic claims lack support and that the general separation claim appears as problematic. A further debate has fueled the first controversy, that is, the supposed distinction between qualitative and quantitative methods. In Essay II, I argue against this distinction. More specifically, I discuss the concept of empirical support in the context of qualitative methods (for short, qualitative support). I provide arguments that although there are two specific and non-trivial properties of qualitative support, there is no methodological separation between quantitative and qualitative methods concerning empirical support. Considered together, the first two essays indicate two points of methodological continuity between educational research and other scientific practices (such as the natural sciences). I therefore conclude that the controversy concerning the scientific status of educational research rests in large part on unjustified claims. Essay III focuses on the second controversy. In this article I argue that Suárez’ inferential approach to the concept of scientific representation can be used as an account of scientific representation in learning, regardless of whether learning is understood as a cognitive or social phenomenon. The third controversy is discussed in Essay IV. Here, I discuss some ontological aspects of the framework of the actor-network theory. Reflecting on the use of this framework in the research field of Networked Learning, I argue that the assumption of an ontology of relations provides the solution for two puzzles about the ontology of networks. The relevance of my argument for the third controversy is that it suggests a point of connection between constructionist and realist interpretations of the ontology of learning. The last two essays suggest two points of continuities between theoretical frameworks that have been and still are argued to be incompatible. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript.</p>