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The older adult population is growing faster than any other cohort of people. By the year 2011, the baby boomers will start turning age 65, presenting a problem for public policy and healthcare systems. One of the key components of successful aging is the maintenance of good health.Numerous studies have extensively documented the link between good health and high lifesatisfaction. Humor has also been shown to be a positive coping mechanism used by older adultsto combat the stressors of aging. The current study explored the relationship between healthstatus, life satisfaction, and humor as a coping mechanism among noninstitutionalized olderadults. The sample consisted of 109 participants over the age of 65. Structural equation modelingwith latent variables indicated that health status and life satisfaction were highly correlated withan increase in health status leading to an increase in life satisfaction. However, coping withhumor neither correlated with nor mediated the relationship between health status and lifesatisfaction. Reasons for these results are explored and suggestions for future studies arepresented.

Did you know you are a mindreader? Most of us have a fundamental curiosity aboutpeople and are in fact engaging in the process of mindreading every day, as wenavigate our social worlds. For instance, we often think about what other people arethinking. On a more basic level, we even predict others' goals based on their actions,such as when they reach for and grasp objects in their environment. This thesisaimed to test and validate a classic action observation paradigm. In order to do so,three experiments were conducted to investigate action observation for goal-directedmovements. In Experiment 1, adults' eye gaze was tracked as they viewed reach-tograspmovements. Contrary to standard predictions, results did not replicate gazeproactivity according to a motor matching account. Rather, adults' eyes latched on totargets that were larger and/or nearer to the agent's hand. A motor matching accountwould have predicted that grasp type (pincer grasp or whole-hand prehension)should cue gaze proactivity to the congruent target (i.e., small object or large object,respectively). In Experiment 2, adults' reaction times were measured as they viewedthe same stimuli, but presented in static rather than dynamic format. Similarly toExperiment 1, adults' response times were faster to detect a target when it appearedover an object closer to the reaching hand, rather than an object farther away fromthe hand. Again, this was not in line with a motor matching account. Finally, inExperiment 3, adults' explicit probability judgements were solicited for still framestaken from the original video stimuli. Yet again, a distance effect prevailed, wherebyadults explicitly predicted that the agent's hand would contact the closer of twoobjects, even when the hand was at rest (in the absence of any motor cue). Overall,these results imply that adults are applying non-motor heuristics during actionobservation. As such, the stimuli tested in these classical studies may not be fit forpurpose, that is, they do not reliably show a motor matching effect during actionobservation in adults. The implications of these findings for future research andtheorising are also discussed.

Archival theory in the English-speaking world has a long and varied history.While today, archival theory is permeated with postmodern ideas and philosophies,borrowing from fields as diverse as anthropology and computer science, even just a fewdecades ago, this was far from the case. In the 1960s and 1970s, and to some extent the1980s, archival theory served more as a professional guide to best practices and "how to"methodology. This transition was pioneered and strongly influenced by the imaginativeand thought-provoking essays of Hugh Alexander Taylor, an English-born Canadianarchivist who developed a worldview that positioned archives at centre stage. Taylor wasable to do so as a result of his fascination with the works of the media theorist, MarshallMcLuhan, whose ideas Taylor found directly applicable to archives and archival theory.

I began collecting tattoos and piercings just after I turned eighteen. As my collection grows and it becomes harder for me to conceal my modifications, I must contend each and every day with the ways in which my body is Othered by my choice to look different. Body modification is self-actualizing for so many, but it can position someone to be stared at, to be physically violated, to be tokenized, or to be vilified. This current project dissects a few key literature areas, from body modification history to the contemporary politics of modification to aesthetic and spectacular philosophy, with the aim to weave together an argument for a nuanced and complex understanding of the social ramifications of body modification. Focus group interviews bring together numerous body modifiers to discuss the right to look (Mirzoeff, 2011) and the effects of personal choice on marginalization. I look toward two broad questions to guide this project: how do those with visible, non-normative body modifications interact with others, and how do those interactions influence their sense of regret?

This is not a theological treatise. I do not deliberate the question of divinity northe persuasiveness of varying conceptions of God. Rather this thesis probes the historyand function of a word-¿¿vara-that carries serious theological implications in IndianPhilosophy.1 The persistent tendency to distort or shroud the meaning of this word is theprecise target of my critique. Although the subject matter may seem narrow in scope,revolving around a single word, several overarching issues concerning textualinterpretation and the popular reception of religious texts are directly implicated.Patañjali's Yogas¿tra (YS) forms the textual basis for what is commonly called"Classical Yoga Philosophy". This first millennia text repeatedly employs the word"¿¿vara" to refer to some divine entity, the nature of which has stirred heated debate inboth traditional and modern commentaries. In contrast to the wealth of moderninterpretations that minimize both the nature and function of this ¿¿vara in Classical Yoga,I argue that the "God" of the YS sustains the same grandeur as found in staunchly theistictexts such as the Bhagavad G¿t¿. In short, "God" means "Supreme God" for Patañjali,regardless of the damage it inflicts on the scholarly wish for a robust and rational'philosophy' of Classical Yoga. This conclusion derives not from a personal affection fortheism and/or devotionalism, but rather a comprehensive archaeology of the term with afocus on textual depiction and historical context.

During twenty years of therapeutic work I have become increasingly aware of thedesperate need of most clients to acquire a positive, functional and integratedpsychological and spiritual map for their lives. It was during this personalprocess of searching for the more positive elements and emotions in psychologythat I became interested in the topic of wisdom as an executive function inpersonality style and the relevance thereof for the spiritual components in thelives of clients.

We are by nature moral beings who desire virtue.1 This fact is borne out by innumerablestudies.2 Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics remain among the mostinfluential works on ethics and human moral psychology. Aristotle claims that human beings candevelop good character traits and achieve virtue with the appropriate upbringing (what Aristotlecalled habituation). Much of what Aristotle says about character traits, virtue, and habituation isaccepted today and inspires character education.3 Yet recent results in experimental psychologychallenge the notion of character traits and virtue as understood by Aristotle. 4 The challenge isthe abundance of evidence showing that almost all human beings lie, cheat, steal, and harmothers; we lack virtue. Christian Miller captures the problem when he says, "the burden is on theAristotelian to show how realizing such a normative ideal is psychologically realistic for beingslike us."5 This dissertation argues that virtue is not a realistic ideal for us absent God's help. Icontend that Aristotle was mistaken about human nature and the power of a good upbringing tocreate good character traits and achieve virtue.

The Buddhist canon contains a substantial amount of material that treats the subjectmatter of ethics. Topics addressed in these texts include how we should live our lives, how weshould treat others, classifications of right and wrong actions, and the articulation of virtues to becultivated and vices to be avoided. The abundance of Buddhist material treating ethical issueseven led O.H. de A. Wijesekera (1971) to make the grandiose claim, "It is universally recognizedthat Buddhism can claim to be the most ethical of all religio-philosophical systems of the world"(p. 49). Charles Goodman (2009) describes Buddhist ethics with its emphasis on non-violenceand compassion as one of most appealing parts of the teachings of Buddhism. He writes, "Manypeople have drawn inspiration from Buddhism's emphasis on compassion, non-violence, andtolerance, its concern for animals, and its models of virtue and self-cultivation" (p. 1). DamienKeown (1992) even argues that Buddhism itself is foremost an ethical project: "Buddhism is aresponse to what is fundamentally an ethical problem-the perennial problem of the best kind oflife for a man (sic) to lead"

In order to understand what counts as a moral transgression, one must understand what contentdelineates immoral acts from acts that are merely bad or undesirable (Machery 2008). How can we tellwhat counts as a violation of a moral norm as opposed to a violation of etiquette or of a prudential norm?Implicitly it is easy, as even by 3 or 4 years of age, young children acquire this capacity and can activelydifferentiate between conventional and moral transgressions (Nucci and Turiel 1978; Nucci 2001; Tisakand Turiel 1984; Turiel 1977; Turiel 1983; Smetana 2006). However, researchers have struggled to makesuch delineations systematically. Early research in moral development understood the moral domainaround a singular concept of justice (Kohlberg 1973; Haidt 2001; Kohlberg 1971; Kohlberg and Hersh1977). However, this proved to be insufficient on its own, both because it was vaguely defined and alsobecause it le¿¿¿¿ out other important aspects like care in interpersonal relationships (Gilligan 1994) and thecultural and religious norms that surround moral judgement but which are not easily understood in termsof justice (Damon 1999; Graham et al. 2018; Graham et al. 2011; Haidt and Joseph 2008).

In the last decade or so, considerable attention has been given by educational theoriststo the works of Jacques Rancière. Most commentators on Rancière's educational thought,which is based on the writings of Joseph Jacotot, believe that it provides us with a novel wayof thinking about emancipatory forms of education that can serve to confront the forces ofoppression, inequality, nihilism, and compliance we find ourselves confronted with today.The general purpose of this study is to assess whether and, if so, to what extent this belief isjustified. This task is approached by taking up and testing out Rancière's adventuring methodof contingency, which is interpreted to be a form of education and a form of researchsimultaneously. Style is a central aspect of the argumentative force of Rancière's approach.Following this, a characteristic of the thesis is the development of three stylistic forms ofwriting: connecting scenes, spiralling, and weaving. The point of departure for the adventureis Rancière's book The Ignorant Schoolmaster. This book then functions as a portal into theworld of Rancière's works as a whole, which in turn function as a portal to the world beyondRancière's works yet implicitly present in those works. In order to test the educational valueof the adventuring method, an attempt is made to understand Rancière's works. Reflectionson this process further allow for the development of a way of thinking about researchadventures as a form of education. The argument made in this thesis lies partly in its aestheticand stylistic force, but several conceptual claims are also developed. One claim entails theproblematisation of the dichotomy between will and intelligence maintained by Rancière.Another claim is that the concept of emancipation - which is fundamentally political innature - is not applicable to education. As an alternative, a way of thinking about educationis developed, infused by a reading of Spinoza's Ethics, as sensible configurations of spaceand time which urge children to persevere and increase their power to express and to thinkunder the mark of equality. Two notions play a central role in these configurations:fascination and the demand to persevere. The first is developed through the reflections onthe thesis' adventure and coupled to Rancière's understanding of the will as a power to bemoved. It is a way to think the self, that is, the will, as fundamentally relational in nature.The second relates to Rancière's notions of unconditional exigency and equality ofintelligence. A prevalent interpretation of that latter notion is problematised in theobservation that understanding Rancière cannot be done without having prior knowledgeand understanding. Finally, the concept of the weight of words is developed as areformulation of Rancière's reading of Aristotle's distinction between expression and noise.

It concerns the normative capacity of attributive goodness. Specifically, it critically evaluates Attributivism, the theory that attributive goodness is fundamentally normative, or that the distribution of that property determines when. whether. and in what way agents ought to act.The first third develops, refines and defends Attributivism. Doing so is, in part, a ground- clearing exercise. I distil that theory from the arguments of many other philosophers. In doing so I isolate and precisify its core commitments. I defend it from a number of objections.The second third analyses fundamental normativity. I stipulate that a standard or property is fundamentally normative if its distribution alone can ground normativity. I argue that for anything to be so fundamentally normative, it must minimally meet two criteria. It must be both authoritative and regulatory.The final third evaluates whether or not attributive goodness satisfies the established criteria. and so whether or not Attributivism is correct. I argue that in its canonical form it isn't. I then develop a revised view of Attributivism that can satisfy the criteria. I argue, however, that the revised view is unsatisfying in almost every respect. Attributivism, revised or otherwise. should be rejected.

The primary purpose of this interpretative phenomenological inquiry was touncover the lived experiences, both professional and personal, of Black female academicdeans across Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Black Feminist Thought (Collins,2,000) served as a guiding theoretical framework in light of the unique experiences ofBlack women as a result of their intersecting identities. Three key findings emerged fromthe interviews with the study's participants. Together, these findings captured the essenceof the lived experiences of the participants in the study. The first finding reflected boththe underlining fatigue that Black female deans battled on a daily basis as they navigatedconstant assaults related to their race and gender as well as their resilience that definedtheir leadership in the face of such assaults. The second finding captured these deans'commitment to channel their leadership oversight towards holding institutionsaccountable for their inequitable and unjust philosophy and practices. And finally, thethird key finding reflected Black female deans' struggles to reimagine the norms andstandards of the academic deanship position to embrace historically under-representedmembers such as themselves.

Woodsy Owl of the U.S. Forest Service has been urging children toward proenvironmentalism with statements such as. "Give a hoot, don't pollute!" for over 40 years (Fuller-Bennett & Velez, 2012). To some, this message may resonate strongly with their core values, but to others it may merely signal the societal assumption that conscientious people don't harm the environment. Among some, it may even provoke irritation toward the preachy wide- eyed bird and his dictates. With human-made environmental disasters such as climate change looming large on the horizon (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2007), understanding people's motivations to protect the environment and their responses to proenvironmental messages could be helpful for preventing such disasters. In the present work, I propose that people can be motivated to be proenvironmental for internal reasons (ie, personally caring about the environment) and/or external reasons (ie, wanting to make a good impression on others) and that these different sources of motivation are associated with distinct environmentally-related responses. Specifically, I propose that whereas internal motivation to be proenvironmental leads to genuine and effective environmental efforts, external motivation to be proenvironmental is primarily associated with a concern with the opinions of others and may even lead to less environmental efforts as a backlash against social pressures.

A recent Supreme Court case conferred the FCC with the ability to increase the fines forprofane language on television as well as to expand their definition of what is deemed offensive.These actions appear to be based on the belief that profane language negatively impacts humanbehavior. Yet little research exists to indicate that profane language has any effect on humanbehavior, much less negative effects. The current studies sought to examine the effect ofexposure to profane language on human behavior. Specifically, we tested whether profanelanguage would impact factors related to self-control. Two studies provide evidence thatprofanity can either decrease or increase self-control based on factors of the situation in whichthe swearing occurred and personal factors of those who are being exposed. A third studyprovides evidence that exposure to profanity decreases the perception of the strictness of socialnorms by those who are exposed to it.

Past research has shown that humans possess implicit or unconscious associations which, when activated, affect subsequent behavior. In three studies, I demonstrated a novel implicit association held by some men, an association between women and birds. In Study 1, I provided initial evidence of a Women-Bird association and its autonomy from other common prejudice measures. In Study 2, I demonstrated two consequences for possessing a Women-Bird association: increased sexist hiring decisions and increased dehumanization of women. For my third study, I demonstrated a causal pattern, such that activation of the Women-Bird association caused an increase in dehumanization of women, sexist hiring decisions, and perceptions that a female candidate was incompetent for those who possessed the association. Mediation analysis indicated that activation of the Women-Bird association among those who possessed the association resulted in sexist hiring decisions because these participants perceived the female candidate as less competent. These findings provide insight into a cause of bias toward women that should be accounted for when attempting to reduce discrimination toward women.

Guided by the ironic process theory and its extensions, the dissertation research aimed at (a)studying the thought suppression paradox in student athletes, (b) exploring the efficacy of anacceptance-mindfulness intervention in decreasing the thought suppression paradox, and (c)using working memory capacity (WMC) to explain individual differences on the susceptibility tothe thought suppression paradox. A total of 90 NCAA Division I student athletes were recruitedand randomly assigned to three conditions (i.e., suppression, control, and intervention). All theathletes performed a set of computerized complex span tasks (i.e., operation, reading, andsymmetry span), and then completed a task pair in each of the two thought-control phases (i.e.,amid, post). The task pair consisted of a thought-monitoring task and a two-color Stroop task.According to the condition assignment, each athlete applied a strategy for controlling the thoughtof a recent athletic failure when performing the task pairs, and his/her EEG was simultaneouslyrecorded. Results generally supported the existence of thought suppression paradox and theefficacy of an acceptance-mindfulness intervention in student athletes, although WMC failed toaccount for individual differences. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

Multiple studies of Self-Verification Theory (e.g. Swann, 1983) have documented people's tendency to seek out information consistent with strongly held self-views, even when negative. An aspect of self-verification that has received less attention concerns the ways in which people with low self-esteem respond to ambivalence associated with receiving positive (i.e. self-disconfirming) feedback. Preliminary evidence suggests that individuals with low self- esteem who receive positive feedback will take the first opportunity to re-assert negative self- views, though the means by which people may re-assert negative self-views have not been well elaborated. The present study sought to determine whether participants with low self-esteem (relative to those with high self-esteem) who undergo a threat to their self-views would utilize a laboratory analogue of self-aggression to re-assert negative self-views. Though findings did not conform to expectations, a pattern of findings arose suggesting a self-esteem by rejection sensitivity interaction as a predictor of higher self-aggression. Theoretical implications for this and other secondary findings are discussed.

This study utilized confirmatory factor analyses and latent change score analyses to model individual and developmental differences in a longitudinal study of children's writing. Participants were 158 children who completed a writing sample each year from 15 through 4th grade. At all four time points, a four-factor model of writing provided the best fit to the data. The factors were macro-organization (presence of topic sentence, number of key elements, and order of ideas). productivity (number of words and number of unique words), complexity (average number or words per sentence and number of connectives), and vocabulary (average number of syllables and average number of characters per word, and percentage of multisyllabic words). The latent change score analyses demonstrated significant relations among the intercepts of macro-organization, productivity, and complexity factors, indicating that children with higher initial levels of one skill were also likely to have higher initial levels of the other. Productivity was also identified as a leading indicator of complexity, such that higher levels of productivity predicted subsequent increases in complexity over time.

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often consume alcohol when attempting to cope with their negative affective states. However, it is not definitively known what accounts for the association between BPD symptoms and alcohol use. Based upon prior research and Linehan's biosocial theory of behavioral dysregulation, the investigators examined if the construct of rumination helped to explain why those with BPD symptoms use alcohol as a means of emotion regulation. Using a behavioral measure of alcohol consumption as well as an experimental rumination induction, the association between active rumination and one's level of alcohol use in a non-clinical sample (N = 56) was examined. The results indicated that, although BPD symptoms positively correlated with placebo consumption amounts, this association did not appear to be accounted for by rumination. The present investigation's findings thus suggest that the construct of rumination may not underlie the relationship between BPD symptomatology and alcohol use. Additional research utilizing clinical samples, psychophysiological measures, and/or ecological momentary assessment designs is warranted to further elucidate rumination's potential impact on alcohol consumption, as well as other forms of behavioral dysregulationcommonly seen in those with BPD.

As human beings, we navigate a rich complicated social world every day. Separatingpeople into any number of social categories allows us to make quick intuitive predictions aboutthe properties that people will have, even if we know very little about them. Psychologicalessentialism proposes that we believe groups have an underlying essence which confers groupmembership and gives rise to the properties associated with that group (Medin & Ortony, 1989).These beliefs influence predictions we make about the origin of category properties (innatepotential), the extent to which members of the same category will share properties (inductivepotential), and our willingness to accept changes from one category to another. While previouswork has examined the extent of essentialist reasoning about natural kinds such as animals (e.g.,Gelman, 2003), the present work aimed to determine whether adults have these intuitive beliefsabout social groups.One consequence of essentialist thinking, innate potential, is a belief that group members,by virtue of their underlying essence, will inevitably develop properties associated with theirgroup regardless of external influence. Previous work from Eidson and Coley (2014) showed thatadults reasoning under a time constraint exhibited increased innate potential compared to thoseunder a time delay. Experiments 1 through 3 expanded on this work to determine if adults wouldexhibit similar increases in beliefs about innate potential under cognitive load (Experiment 1),within-subjects for reasoning about gender (Experiment 2) or for other social groups (i.e., race,gender, religion, and political affiliation - Experiment 3). To assess innate potential, participantsread two switched-at-birth scenarios in which children were born to members of one social groupand raised by another. Then, under cognitive load or a time constraint or time delay, participantsmade predictions about the child's behaviors and physical characteristics later in life.

This dissertation argues for a feminist practice of liminal laughter, a bodily laughter thatcements a critical engagement. Liminal laughter is formed in the margins, across variousdisciplines and genres; it is a subversive and parodic laughter that radically challenges thehegemonic narratives of patriarchy and heterosexuality. To contend that feminismbenefits from this practice of liminal laughter, I expand on poststructural andphenomenological feminisms and their conceptualizations of the body. Subsequently,using the nineteenth century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche and his concepts of thetransvaluation of all values, overcoming, and affirmation, I create a conceptual frame forthinking liminal laughter. To provide examples for this theory, I look to the MickeeFaust Club, an eclectic theater troupe in Tallahassee, Florida and the works of the theoristand novelist Hélène Cixous. Liminal laughter is a practice that revalues the body'scapacities of sensing feeling to disrupt and destabilize the mind / body, masculine /feminine, natural / unnatural, and subject / other binaries. By doing so, liminal laughternot only displaces the dominant terms, but it is also creates alternative narratives.

This thesis explores the educational potential of living and learning in the light of death. Through an analysis of Heidegger's concept of Being, I highlight how our mortality is intimately bound up with care and therefore a potentially powerful place to begin reimagining the classroom. With the help of Noddings theory of caring, I explore how Heidegger's key concepts of death, care, and authenticity can be integrated into an education-towards-death. Based on insights from those who have worked with individuals near the end of life, I outline four means-mindfulness, emotional engagement, deeper engagement with others, and finding and living personal meaning-of putting an education-towards-death into practice.

This dissertation aimed to spotlight a prevalent issue in lifespan development and learning that is under-appreciated in educational research and practice. Many children in the United States and abroad learn to coordinate fundamental motor actions with maladaptive postural deviations that impose excessive stress and strain on musculoskeletal structures. The stabilization of maladaptive movement patterns during a critical period of psychomotor development produces non-structural sagittal misalignments of the spine, including Forward Head Posture (FHP) and Postural Thoracic Hyperkyphosis. Moreover, the reproduction of maladaptive movement patterns may be associated with the development of musculoskeletal disorders and associated chronic pain conditions that impact the global public. The researcher employed philosophical synthesis to describe and explain the adverse effects of maladaptive postural coordination on lifespan human development while amplifying its origins in early childhood. Principles from the traditions of Pragmatism and Dynamical Systems Theory are applied to develop a positive model of adaptive psychomotor learning and development that is seamlessly integrated into Early Childhood Education curriculum and learning formats. To this end, Early Childhood Education should structure learning experiences to guide the discovery and stabilization of adaptive movement patterns that (1) accomplish fundamental action goals in the here-and-now and (2) support the health of the changing neuromuscular-skeletal system across its lifetime. Therefore, the researcher proposes a model of early learning in which the study of the body-self is seamlessly woven into all aspects of the general ECE curriculum.

Can unfree people make themselves free? Some people are unfree because of the social and political conditions in which they find themselves. To become freer would require changing those conditions; yet changing them requires the exercise of freedom. So it seems like they must already befree in order to become free. Drawing on John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and B.R. Ambedkar, I argue that the unfree can make themselves free. Unfreedom involves external constraints and how those constraints shape people's agency. Becoming freer involves coming to know, from the inside, how our agency has been shaped. We can change that shaping and in turn the social conditions. The problem of unfreedom is a vicious cycle. Social conditions constrain agency, which in turn further entrenches the social conditions. A virtuous cycle is possible. Agents can change their conditions, reducing the constraint on their agency, in turn enabling greater change. Conditions are unstable, and agents can take advantage of that instability.

Literary criticism and the history of philosophy have a fairly standard story to tell about the development off German literature and philosophy around 1800. According to this story there were three major movements that cut across literature and philosophy, which, themselves, were always intertwined: Classicsim, Idealism and Romanticism. What all three of these movement have in common, so the story goes, is that they are all reactions to the ground-breaking, epoch shifting philosophy of Immanuel Kant and as such, some version of "Idealism". Matthew C. Altman sums up this position the Palgrave Handbook to German Idealism when he states that, "Kant's "Copernican revolution in philosophy" - the idea that the world must conform to our representation of it, rather than vice versa - inaugurated a movement that philosophers could take up or argue against, but that could not be ignored."1 Kant's shift to Transcendental Idealism, the story goes, set up a constellation of ideas that overturned and delegitimized previous paradigms and to which any intellectual who hoped to maintain relevance had to respond. For Kant's contemporaries, the question, in other words, was no longer whether Kant was correct in directing philosophy towards the spontaneous powers of the rational subject but how to respond. Or in the words of Dieter Henrich, the question post-Kant now became: "how can we improve the framework established by Kantat while maintaining its most important results.

This dissertation argues that ethics is fundamentally mind-dependent. Ethics is invented by humans, to solve the problems that mutually sympathetic agents ¿nd in living together. Ethical discovery is the discovery of solutions to the kinds of problems that humans ¿nd themselves to face. Views of this kind are familiar, but I attempt to re-orient the debate. Many philosophers see questions about the foundations of ethics as fundamentally theoretical, arguing for one view or another on metaphysical or linguistic grounds. I argue that the question of which metaethical view we adopt is a substantive, ¿rst-order moral question. And, contrary to many, I think that ¿rst-order considerations speak in favour of a variety of anti-realism. We should reject the search for non-natural, mind-independent, objective moral truths as morally objectionable: it denigrates interpersonal concern, making the signi¿cance of moral and practical life dependent upon abstractions remote from what we care about and ought to care about. By contrast, seeing norms of morality and practical rationality as collectively created by processes of interpersonal sympathy shows why they matter, and explains the goals and methods of moral inquiry.

The cultural philosopher Jean Baudrillard in his work Le Système Des Objets looked at the meanings of the object per se and came to the conclusion that we, 'and objects are indeed bound together in a collusion in which the objects take on a certain density, an emotional value - what might be called a 'presence'.' (Baudrillard, J. 2005, p.14) His study of the meanings, therefore the language of objects, draws attention to the fact that they are always in movement away from our attempts to project meaning onto them, that they have a dimension which transcends their function for us and that is their technology, from whence they were made. I argue that particularly in the case of transparent objects there is a further 'transcendence', that of the spiritual, or theological, and look at the relationship between meaning and language in response to such a 'presence'.This thesis is a systemic journey on the meanings and 'dialogue' of transparent objects, utilising case studies of selected objects and a self-reflexive research method, with the inclusion of autobiographical material. What is commonly thought of as the 'transparent' is examined as locus of dynamics of the self, alongside the 'subtle' transparency of the iconic function. I question what it is that transparent objects can tell us about our shared reality, through our apprehension of them and their particular qualities, what dialogues they bring forth, how do they in particular function as 'earth angels' (McNiff, 1995) and what they can bring, channel or enable.

Any insights we can hope to gain with respect to what is going on with our mental lives and our agency will almost certainly require a close examination of the "worst-case scenarios", since it is when things break down that the joints of the phenomena are revealed. This is a philosophical intuition of mine that pervades everything I work on, and the papers that make up this dissertation are no exception. In keeping with this guiding sentiment, this dissertation tackles three philosophical issues related to the so-called "loss of control" that occurs in mental disorder, and it does so in a way that places the phenomenology of agency at the forefront in some way or other. In my first paper on the sense of agency in anorexia nervosa (AN), I try to resolve an apparent discrepancy between the phenomenology of anorexics in the grip of their disorder and the psychological and neurological data that purport to describe what they are undergoing. I provide a solution to this apparent incongruency by offering an account of the sense of agency in AN that grants sincerity to anorexic testimony while also being able to explain why the relevant experiences of agency come to be illusory. Then, in my second paper, I broaden my scope to include not just AN but also substance use disorder (SUD).

An underexplored aspect of moral experience is apprehending ("seeing") other people as mattering, grasping the significance of whether their interests are set back or enhanced. This dissertation contends that these value-apprehensional' (v-a) experiences play an important role of revealing values to us, both in our experiences of people in general and of those emotionally close to us. Caring emotions are plausibly involved in enabling, enriching, and enhancing these. An initial contention (in Ch. 2) is that experiencing other people's value is one way that we attain adequate systematic comprehension of morality. Evidence for this includes findings about psychopaths' performance on the so-labeled moral-conventional task. Psychopaths tend to be impaired in comprehending that protecting welfare is the point behind rules prohibiting acts of harming. This suggests that they are impaired at apprehending the significance of others' welfare, and this seems traceable to early emotional impairments.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often associated with a certain political form of relating to another as a person, where a person is seen as a locus of enforceable demands. Nevertheless, as I argue in this dissertation, Rousseau also articulated an affective form of relating to another, where relating to another as a person in this sense involves seeing them as a locus of a kind of value that cannot be demanded. I consider the significance of this affective form for Rousseau's understanding of the passion he calls amour-propre, as well for his understanding of domination and of the connection between the political and affective realms.