For such a vexing topic as gender identity, this dissertation asks a rather straightforward question: If gender identity is—as Judith Butler has asserted—socially constructed and discursively mediated, then why does transgender hormone therapy (THT) work? This is the question concerning endocrinology that I ask Butler, and their answer is, if requiring of delicate assessment and interpretation, clear: it doesn't. Butler's work reveals an admonishing view that the efficacity of THT is due to placebo effect, in turn brought on by the bewitchment of the trans* who seeks medical transition. In a logic similar to sin and salvation, if only the trans* had not believed in gender dysphoria, then there would be no (putative) efficacity to THT whatsoever. With our answer, we begin a perilous adventure of discovering just why such a preeminent gender theorist (and trans* themselves) with no experience of gender dysphoria, and no desire to medically transition, would say this. We examine Butler's gender theory, their concept of desire, their views on the self, on transsexuality, their rarely discussed philosophies of science and nature, and their dearth of citations of transsexual voices. Due to this lack, I lend my own, relying upon my experience with gender dysphoria, THT, and medical transitioning. Unfortunately, in the times we live with attacks against *trans people and their healthcare, these questions could not be less theoretical, and more practical. In my view, Butler simply does not believe in the physical validity and medical exigency of gender dysphoria—the primary reason that we transsexuals pursue THT. Thus, in a dissertation that addresses questions of existential urgency and indisputable suffering, I show that Butler's gender theory lacks explanatory power and conceptual coherency, at a time when medically transitioning trans* could not need it more.

Philosophes et scientifiques ont souvent adopté la version orthodoxe de l’étalonnage qui consiste à normaliser un instrument en utilisant un phénomène connu. Le lien essentiel entre concepts théoriques et données empiriques, en philosophie de la mesure, a engendré la formulation de principes de coordination, synthétiques a priori, et révisables. La pensée opérationaliste a voulu limiter l’étendue des concepts aux opérations de mesure effectivement réalisables. La perspective cohérentiste en philosophie de la mesure a opéré une récupération de l’épistémologie coordinationniste et de l’opérationalisme, en s’appuyant sur un nombre minime de principes ontologiques. Les modèles d’un instrument impliquent un engagement à la séparation entre les théories idéalisées et les choses matérielles. Toutefois, philosophes et métrologues ont préconisé l’exigence d’un riche contenu théorique dans la modélisation des instruments de mesure. Selon d’autres contributions, le privilège épistémique de la mesure précède une théorie d’arrière-plan et sa robustesse réside dans le libre contact avec les données empiriques. De plus, le régime d’applicabilité d’une théorie dicte ses conditions aux limites, qui guident l’expérimentateur dans la conception d’instruments de mesure et fournissent le fondement de l’opérationnalisation du sens des termes théoriques. Je soutiens un pluralisme opérationnel, des opérations de mesure impliquant différents indicateurs physiques, accompagné d'un cohérentisme dynamique. Le programme d’étalonnage du télescope spatial James Webb est un cas significatif. Les observations des étoiles d’étalonnage par différents procédés sont utilisées pour calculer les facteurs qui convertissent une mesure en unités instrumentales en unités physiques. / Philosophers and scientists have often adopted the orthodox version of calibration which involves standardizing an instrument using a known phenomenon. The essential link between theoretical concepts and empirical data, in the philosophy of measurement, has generated the formulation of principles of coordination, synthetic a priori, and revisables. Operationalist thinking wanted to limit the scope of concepts to operations of measurement that are actually achievable. The coherentist perspective in the philosophy of measurement has operated a recovery of coordinationist epistemology and operationalism, relying on a minimal number of ontological principles. Models of an instrument involve a commitment to separation between idealized theories and material things. However, philosophers and metrologists have advocated the requirement of a rich theoretical content in the modeling of measuring instruments. According to other contributions, the epistemic privilege of measurement precedes a background theory and its robustness lies in the free contact with empirical data. Moreover, the applicability regime of a theory dictates its boundary conditions, which guide the experimenter in the design of measuring instruments and provide the basis for operationalizing the meaning of theoretical terms. I support operational pluralism, measurement operations involving different physical indicators, accompanied by dynamic coherentism. The James Webb Space Telescope calibration program is a significant case. Observations of calibration stars by various methods are used to calculate the factors that convert a measurement in instrumental units to physical units.

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The term “mental health” is everywhere, from government agendas, to educational reforms, to daily discourse. This is for good reason—hundreds of millions of people suffer from significant mental health concerns with a diagnosable mental disorder, let alone the fact that nearly all individuals have struggled with their mental health. The importance of mental health is uncontroversial, but the same cannot be said about its nature. Every practice related to mental health—which involves some of the most vulnerable people in the world—is committed to a conceptualization of mental health regardless of whether that practice is cognizant of this fact. Therefore, it is imperative to develop better answers to the questions of “what is mental health and why?” because conceptualizations of mental health systematically guide research, intervention, policy, and even how individuals strive to live their lives. I argue that the answer to the question of “what is mental health?” is that mental health is a causal nexus of positive facts. That is, mental health is to be identified with a cluster of positive facts that regularly co-occur such as resilience, hedonistic mental states like joy, high cognitive functioning like concentration, and productivity. The answer to the question “why is mental health what it is?” is that the positive facts regularly appear together due to the causal relations between them, rather than arbitrarily. For instance, resilience causes high cognitive functioning, which in turn causes resilience, which causes productivity, which causes high cognitive functioning and joy, and so forth. This explains why mental health is what it is because the causal relations between positive facts “glue” them together, causing them to regularly co-occur, thereby making them a stable category of existence that factors into epistemic practices such as induction and prediction. However, given the state of our knowledge, further empirical evidence is needed to elucidate the exact positive facts that constitute the mental health causal nexus and thus answer what mental health is. I provide a novel methodology—the anchoring analysis—that involves studying the mechanisms of causal interactions between potential positive facts to determine which are the most causally important and thus should be considered constitutive facts of mental health. Elucidating the homeostatic mechanism of the kind mental health is a daunting task; however, we only complicate matters for ourselves if we simplify the complexity of mental health. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy

Notre thèse étudie la relation entre les mécaniques classique et relativiste. Il est généralement supposé, à partir de l’hypothèse des petites vitesses, que la mécanique classique correspond à la mécanique relativiste dans les cas où la vitesse des objets est petite par rapport à la vitesse de la lumière. Cette position nous semble inadéquate pour la simple raison que la mécanique classique ne peut être restreinte au seule domaine des petites vitesses. Nous proposons l’hypothèse que les deux mécaniques ont une structure commune et que chacune se distingue sous certaines conditions. Pour appuyer cette hypothèse, nous proposons une axiomatisation de la mécanique suffisamment générale pour servir de structure commune aux mécaniques classique et relativiste. Cette axiomatisation comporte une théorie de la relativité qui précise comment les quantités relatives sont reliées entre elles lorsque déterminées par rapport à différents référentiels, et les lois du mouvement qui précisent comment les forces exercées sur un objet détermine son mouvement. Cette mécanique générale est déterminée à deux constantes près et c’est en déterminant la valeur de ces constantes qu’apparaît le bris de la structure commune qui génère la mécanique classique d’une part et la mécanique relativiste d’autre part. / Our thesis studies the relationship between classical and relativistic mechanics. It is generally assumed, based on the assumption of small velocities, that classical mechanics corresponds to relativistic mechanics in cases where the speed of objects is small compared to the speed of light. This position seems inadequate to us, for the simple reason that classical mechanics cannot be restricted to the realm of small velocities alone. We propose the hypothesis that the two mechanics have a common structure, and that each can be distinguished under certain conditions. To support this hypothesis, we propose an axiomatization of mechanics that is sufficiently general to serve as a common structure for both classical and relativistic mechanics. This axiomatization includes a theory of relativity that specifies how relative quantities are related to each other when determined with respect to different reference frames, and laws of motion that specify how forces exerted on an object determine its motion. This general mechanics is determined to within two constants, and it is by determining the value of these constants that the common structure that generates classical mechanics on the one hand and relativistic mechanics on the other is broken down.

Feminist philosophy of science has long been considered a fringe element of philosophy of science as a whole. A careful consideration of the treatment of the key concept of objectivity by such philosophical heavyweights as Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper, followed by an analysis of the concept of objectivity with the work of such feminist philosophers of science as Donna Haraway, Lynn Hankinson Nelson, and Sandra Harding, reveals that feminist philosophers of science are not members of some fringe movement of philosophy of science, but rather are doing philosophical work which is both crucial and connected to the work of other, "mainstream" philosophers of science. / Master of Arts

Terence Hutchison's 1938 essay has been variously interpreted as introducing positivism, ultra-empiricism, and Popperian falsificationism into economics. Given Popper's well known anti-positivist stance, this state of affairs may seem puzzling. It might be presumed either that contradictions of some kind are involved in Hutchison's position, or that Popper's stance is not so far removed from logical positivism after all. In tins thesis the latter option is adopted and Popper and logical positivism is viewed as part of a wider 'logical reconstructionist' pre-Quinean philosophy of science. Yet this move may not, and should not, resolve all disquietude on the part of the reader. For, to the extent that Hutchison adopted those aspects of Popper which clashed with logical positivism, there is an inherent contradiction between the view that Hutchison introduced positivism and the view that he introduced Popper into economics. This provides us with the springboard we need for our thesis. For the contradiction is resolved once these views are recognised as turning Hutchison into a straw man. In the weak version of our thesis we argue that there has been an overemphasis on the positivist and Popperian elements in Hutchison's essay and a neglect of the extent to which it is concerned with economic methodology. In the strong version of our thesis we argue that Hutchison's essay is best viewed as a modern restatement of the inductivist-empirical-historical, as opposed to the deductivist-apriorist-fonnalist, approach in the long-standing methodenstreit in economics. In this restatement Hutchison draws on various elements of positivism and Popper to support a position that arises out of, and is specific to, the concerns of economic methodology, rather than to promote any particular philosophy of science in economics. Survey chapters on the philosophy of science with special emphasis on logical positivism, and on aspects of the history of economic methodology, enable us to evaluate the nature of Hutchison's essay and to substantiate our thesis. Thereafter we highlight the shortcomings of the traditional interpretations of Hutchison's essay pointing to how these have limited Hutchison's influence in economics. / Economics / D. Litt. et Phil. (Economics)