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Thinking Nature, "Pierre Maupertuis And The Charge Of Error Against Fermat And Leibniz", Richard Samuel Lamborn
Thinking Nature, "Pierre Maupertuis And The Charge Of Error Against Fermat And Leibniz", Richard Samuel Lamborn
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The purpose of this dissertation is to defend Pierre Fermat and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz against the charge of error made against them by Pierre Maupertuis that they errantly applied final causes to physics. This charge came in Maupertuis’ 1744 speech to the Paris Academy of Sciences, later published in different versions, entitled Accord Between Different Laws Which at First Seemed Incompatible. It is in this speech that Maupertuis lays claim to one of the most important discoveries in the history of physics and science, The Principle of Least Action. From the date of this speech up until the end …
Berkeley And The Mind Of God, Craig Berchet Knepley
Berkeley And The Mind Of God, Craig Berchet Knepley
Theses and Dissertations
I tackle a troubling question of interpretation: Does Berkeley's God feel pain? Berkeley's anti-skepticism seems to bar him from saying that God does not feel pain, for this would mean there is something to reality 'beyond' the perceptible. Yet Berkeley's concerns for common sense and orthodoxy bar him from saying that God does have an idea of pain. For Berkeley to have an idea of pain just is to suffer it, and an immutable God cannot suffer. Thus solving the pain problem requires answers to further questions: What are God's perceptions, for Berkeley? What are God's acts of will? How …
Explaining Consciousness: An Argument Against Physicalism And An Argument For Theism, Benjamin Dobler
Explaining Consciousness: An Argument Against Physicalism And An Argument For Theism, Benjamin Dobler
Honors Projects
Consciousness, the mental phenomenon of our subjective experience of the world, has long been the subject of philosophical debate. The world we experience is full of sights, sounds, taste, smells, and feelings--phenomenal experiences. As the vehicle of phenomenal experience, consciousness is one of the most familiar and readily accessible features of our world, and perhaps the hardest to deny. Yet science tells us that our world is entirely composed of matter and energy, and physical phenomena can be explained as just that. In Part I, I argue that consciousness stands wholly at odds with this scientistic worldview, providing evidence against …