Browsing by Subject "philosophy"
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Item A Narrative Approach to the Philosophical Interpretation of Dreams, Memories, and Reflections of the Unconscious Through the Use of Autoethnography/Biography(2012-07-16) Rivera Rosado, AntonioThe purpose of the present study aimed to develop a comprehensive model that measures the autoethnographic/biographic relevance of dreams, memories, and reflections as they relate to understanding the self and others. A dream, memory, and reflection (DMR) ten item questionnaire was constructed using aspects of Freudian, Jungian, and Lacanian Theory of Dream Interpretation. Fifteen dreams, five memories, and five reflections were collected from the participant at the waking episode or during a moment of deep thought. The DMR analysis was used as the prime matter for creating a narrative document that uses autoethnography and autobiography to deliver a philosophical story about the unconscious reality of the participant. The results of the dissertation study produced a ten section narrative document titled The Shadow of Joaquin that portrayed the benchmarks of the life of the participant that led him to the completion of a doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction. At the final section of the narrative document the postmodern philosophical theory of Labor Percolation is proposed by the researcher as a direct result of the DMR analysis.Item An Empirical Survey of the Analytic / Continental Divide(Texas Digital Library, 2023-05-16) Barta, WalterWhat is the difference, if any, between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy? Contemporary philosophers tend to identify themselves, and so contemporary philosophy is divided, roughly along these lines. Thus, two fields of discourse, the analytic and the continental, have emerged. But is this division substantive or rhetorical? Is it helpful or harmful? What are its effects inside and outside the discipline? Can these categories be concretely defined, or are they nebulous and provisional? Some metaphilosophers, like C. G. Prado, in A House Divided, have suggested that analytic philosophy and continental philosophy are distinguishable based on respective focuses, and that the divide falls along lines, such as these: problem solving versus political engagement, philosophical analysis versus synthesis (e.g. a genealogical orientation), bottom-up versus top-down approaches to disciplinary hierarchy. Others have suggested that the analytic/continental divide is erroneous, illusory, merely rhetorical, or simply nonexistent. Each of these constitutes a claim that is empirically testable against the fields of discourse of the two (sub)disciplines through a comparison of textual data: the presence of logically valent as opposed to politically valent words, manner of reference to historical figures, and distribution of textual citations. Inasmuch as these correspond to quantifiable metrics, each of the aforementioned questions may have a discrete and demonstrable empirical answer. The use of empirical and statistical surveys in philosophy is unusual, but its recent implementation by David Chalmers (as in his recent “What do Philosophers Believe?”) and other influential philosophers has proven its ability to develop important insights.Item Imagery, affect, and the embodied mind: implications for reading and responding to literature(Texas A&M University, 2006-04-12) Krasny, Karen A.Since Plato first banished poets from his Republic, the relationship between the aesthetic and moral value of literature has been subject to philosophical, critical, and pedagogical debate. In this philosophical investigation, I sought to explain how the evocation of the senses during literary transactions shapes the phenomenal experience of the reader. Recent developments in neuroscience (Damasio, 1999, 2003; Edelman, 1992) provide strong evidence in support of embodied theories of cognition in which imagery and affect play a central role. The purposes of this philosophical investigation were to describe the structure and function of imagery and affect in the cognitive act of reading, to provide a detailed account of how we exercise our capacity for imaginative thought in order to achieve literal, inferential, and critical comprehension, and to explore the implications of an embodied mind for reading and responding to literary texts. The investigation yielded a critical review of contemporary theories of reading (Kintsch, 1998; Rumelhart, 1977; Sadoski & Paivio, 2001) to examine their ability to explain the phenomena associated with the literary experience. Dual coding theory (Sadoski & Paivio, 2001) which maintains an empirical and embodied view of the mind was shown to have considerable theoretical advantages over rationalist computational theories of cognition in explaining phenomena associated with reading and responding to literary texts. A neurobiological account of consciousness provides support for the idea that literature can engage readers imaginatively in the process moral deliberation (Dewey, 1932/1985). In addition, I concluded that considerable evidence exists to suggest that somatic and visceral changes experienced as a result of undergoing the text can potentially incite individual and social change.Item Romantic Science: Science and Romance as Literary Modes in Sir Kenelm Digby's Loose Fantasies and Two Treatises(2010-07-14) Streeter, Michael T.This thesis argues that 17th century polymath Sir Kenelm Digby treats his scientific discourses as psychological romances in his works Loose Fantasies and Two Treatises, with his use of courtly romantic tropes, and that a contemporary audience would have read Digby's scientific treatises as literary. I first argue that science and romance in Digby's narrative romance Loose Fantasies are literary modes of the text's narrative form and that these modes are not mutually exclusive, since science is a "pyschodrama" to Digby, who is both the audience and author of these putative "private memoirs." I then relate Digby's "romantic science" in Loose Fantasies to his "poetike Idea of science" in Digby's Two Treatises in order to argue that while the treatise is traditionally received as a philosophical discourse, it is also a work of literary criticism. I conclude that Digby's "poetike Idea of science" is always unstable, because Digby cannot choose between the primacy of language and ideas in human cognition, due to the rapid rationalistic developments in epistemology during his time.Item Two responses to a moment in the question of transcendence: a study of first boundaries in Plotinean and Kabbalistic cosmogonical metaphysics(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) DeBord, Charles EugeneThis thesis contrasts the Plotinean attitude towards transcendence at the cosmological level with that of certain Kabbalistic authors of the 13th-17th century. Special emphasis is placed on the different approaches taken by each of the two sides to addressing the origin of otherness. Following a brief introduction to the notion of the question of transcendence, the first major part (chapter II) is dedicated to an exploration of the Plotinean conception of metaphysical "descent" from the One to subsequent hypostases. The second major part (chapter III) focuses on Kabbalistic conceptions of the descent from the indefinite infinite to the finite (limited) realm. Finally, I attempt to illustrate the questions and concerns common to each of the two cosmologies. In so doing, I make use of semiotic concepts to clarify the contrast between the two models.