Experience

Publications

• The Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics: A Phenomenological Investigation

  University of Kentucky

  This dissertation is a phenomenological investigation of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The primary subject matter for description and analysis is scientific instruments and their use in experiments which elicit the measurement problem. A methodological critique is mounted against the ontological commitments taken for granted in the canonical interpretations of quantum theory and the scientific activity of measurement as the necessary interface between theoretical interest and perceptual results. I argue that an aesthetic dimension of reality functions as a proto-scientific establishment of sense-making that constantly operates to set integratively all other cognitively neat determinations, including scientifically rendered objects that are intrinsically non-visualizable. The way in which data "key in"​ to the original and originative register of the sensible in observation is clarified by examining prostheses, measuring apparatuses and instruments that are sense-conveying and -integrative with the human sensorium. Quantum measurement is a praxic-dynamic activity and homologically structured and structuring functional engagement whose desideratum is spatiotemporal differentiation. The capaciousness of Nature and the way in which we are integratively set within Nature in a materiality-phenomenality correlation discloses Nature's constituent potential, a condition more primitive than causal interplay. Finally, the relation between a physical mechanism or process and its functional mathematical representation is clarified. No physical mechanism or process accounts for the empirical effects of measurement outcomes in some quantum mechanical experiments. Within the milieu of ordinary perceptual experience, complete with its horizonal structure of spatiality and temporality, something uncaused is encountered which resists full determination in terms of mathematical representation.

• The Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics: A Phenomenological Investigation

  University of Kentucky

  This dissertation is a phenomenological investigation of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The primary subject matter for description and analysis is scientific instruments and their use in experiments which elicit the measurement problem. A methodological critique is mounted against the ontological commitments taken for granted in the canonical interpretations of quantum theory and the scientific activity of measurement as the necessary interface between theoretical interest and perceptual results. I argue that an aesthetic dimension of reality functions as a proto-scientific establishment of sense-making that constantly operates to set integratively all other cognitively neat determinations, including scientifically rendered objects that are intrinsically non-visualizable. The way in which data "key in"​ to the original and originative register of the sensible in observation is clarified by examining prostheses, measuring apparatuses and instruments that are sense-conveying and -integrative with the human sensorium. Quantum measurement is a praxic-dynamic activity and homologically structured and structuring functional engagement whose desideratum is spatiotemporal differentiation. The capaciousness of Nature and the way in which we are integratively set within Nature in a materiality-phenomenality correlation discloses Nature's constituent potential, a condition more primitive than causal interplay. Finally, the relation between a physical mechanism or process and its functional mathematical representation is clarified. No physical mechanism or process accounts for the empirical effects of measurement outcomes in some quantum mechanical experiments. Within the milieu of ordinary perceptual experience, complete with its horizonal structure of spatiality and temporality, something uncaused is encountered which resists full determination in terms of mathematical representation.

• Technological Anarchism: The Meaning of Magic in Harry Potter

  Unlocking Press

  History textbooks that acknowledge humans used to believe in magic invariably do so in order to isolate magical thinking and experience to prescientific ages. Magical belief, so the conventional story goes, was common during humanity’s period of intellectual immaturity but now that we have scientific explanations for scary and wonderful things magical beliefs are no longer appropriate for serious, clear-thinking people. Magic, if it is regarded seriously at all, is little more than a quaint subject about which an eccentric historian or anthropologist muse over in their spare time, or the feignedly rebellious ventilations of the privileged classes descanting on their boutique spirituality. There is no doubt that the Scientific Revolution established a categorically different way of understanding nature and our place in it. The “disenchantment of the world” swiftly began to displace from the world its supernatural realities and spiritual forces with the fully explicable world of immutable natural laws and causal mechanism. The magic at work in the Harry Potter (HP) series has more in common with these principles of modern science than with the historical magic that anthropologists study. The correspondence between HP magic and modern science can also be found when we examine the nature of science’s twin: technology. And because the magic in HP is functionally equivalent to technology, Rowling has placed in our hands a tool with which to critically examine technology in our world from a fresh perspective.

• The Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics: A Phenomenological Investigation

  University of Kentucky

  This dissertation is a phenomenological investigation of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The primary subject matter for description and analysis is scientific instruments and their use in experiments which elicit the measurement problem. A methodological critique is mounted against the ontological commitments taken for granted in the canonical interpretations of quantum theory and the scientific activity of measurement as the necessary interface between theoretical interest and perceptual results. I argue that an aesthetic dimension of reality functions as a proto-scientific establishment of sense-making that constantly operates to set integratively all other cognitively neat determinations, including scientifically rendered objects that are intrinsically non-visualizable. The way in which data "key in"​ to the original and originative register of the sensible in observation is clarified by examining prostheses, measuring apparatuses and instruments that are sense-conveying and -integrative with the human sensorium. Quantum measurement is a praxic-dynamic activity and homologically structured and structuring functional engagement whose desideratum is spatiotemporal differentiation. The capaciousness of Nature and the way in which we are integratively set within Nature in a materiality-phenomenality correlation discloses Nature's constituent potential, a condition more primitive than causal interplay. Finally, the relation between a physical mechanism or process and its functional mathematical representation is clarified. No physical mechanism or process accounts for the empirical effects of measurement outcomes in some quantum mechanical experiments. Within the milieu of ordinary perceptual experience, complete with its horizonal structure of spatiality and temporality, something uncaused is encountered which resists full determination in terms of mathematical representation.

• Technological Anarchism: The Meaning of Magic in Harry Potter

  Unlocking Press

  History textbooks that acknowledge humans used to believe in magic invariably do so in order to isolate magical thinking and experience to prescientific ages. Magical belief, so the conventional story goes, was common during humanity’s period of intellectual immaturity but now that we have scientific explanations for scary and wonderful things magical beliefs are no longer appropriate for serious, clear-thinking people. Magic, if it is regarded seriously at all, is little more than a quaint subject about which an eccentric historian or anthropologist muse over in their spare time, or the feignedly rebellious ventilations of the privileged classes descanting on their boutique spirituality. There is no doubt that the Scientific Revolution established a categorically different way of understanding nature and our place in it. The “disenchantment of the world” swiftly began to displace from the world its supernatural realities and spiritual forces with the fully explicable world of immutable natural laws and causal mechanism. The magic at work in the Harry Potter (HP) series has more in common with these principles of modern science than with the historical magic that anthropologists study. The correspondence between HP magic and modern science can also be found when we examine the nature of science’s twin: technology. And because the magic in HP is functionally equivalent to technology, Rowling has placed in our hands a tool with which to critically examine technology in our world from a fresh perspective.

• Uncovering the Prejudice in Modern Science and Theology

  Georgia State University

  (Master's Thesis) Prejudice, as theorized by Hans-Georg Gadamer, is a cognitive condition common to all humans that must be uncovered and confronted before projects that aim to synthesize philosophy, science, and religion begin. In science, the Prejudice has been challenged by the discoveries of modern physics; however, other fields of science remain devoted to the paradigm of the Prejudice. In theology, the Prejudice dominates modern Christian understandings of the text and interpretation succumbs to its authority. I propose that Galileo may be the first fundamentalist insofar as he applied flexible interpretations of biblical texts that seemed in conflict with his empirical findings. The criticisms of the Prejudice by Gadamer, Owen Barfield, and Ken Wilber, support my effort to lay a groundwork for post-Prejudice hermeneutics. We must experience a “felt change of consciousness” from the Prejudice and once again understand ourselves as participating with phenomena in all of their empirical, rational, and spiritual aspects.

• The Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics: A Phenomenological Investigation

  University of Kentucky

  This dissertation is a phenomenological investigation of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The primary subject matter for description and analysis is scientific instruments and their use in experiments which elicit the measurement problem. A methodological critique is mounted against the ontological commitments taken for granted in the canonical interpretations of quantum theory and the scientific activity of measurement as the necessary interface between theoretical interest and perceptual results. I argue that an aesthetic dimension of reality functions as a proto-scientific establishment of sense-making that constantly operates to set integratively all other cognitively neat determinations, including scientifically rendered objects that are intrinsically non-visualizable. The way in which data "key in"​ to the original and originative register of the sensible in observation is clarified by examining prostheses, measuring apparatuses and instruments that are sense-conveying and -integrative with the human sensorium. Quantum measurement is a praxic-dynamic activity and homologically structured and structuring functional engagement whose desideratum is spatiotemporal differentiation. The capaciousness of Nature and the way in which we are integratively set within Nature in a materiality-phenomenality correlation discloses Nature's constituent potential, a condition more primitive than causal interplay. Finally, the relation between a physical mechanism or process and its functional mathematical representation is clarified. No physical mechanism or process accounts for the empirical effects of measurement outcomes in some quantum mechanical experiments. Within the milieu of ordinary perceptual experience, complete with its horizonal structure of spatiality and temporality, something uncaused is encountered which resists full determination in terms of mathematical representation.

• Technological Anarchism: The Meaning of Magic in Harry Potter

  Unlocking Press

  History textbooks that acknowledge humans used to believe in magic invariably do so in order to isolate magical thinking and experience to prescientific ages. Magical belief, so the conventional story goes, was common during humanity’s period of intellectual immaturity but now that we have scientific explanations for scary and wonderful things magical beliefs are no longer appropriate for serious, clear-thinking people. Magic, if it is regarded seriously at all, is little more than a quaint subject about which an eccentric historian or anthropologist muse over in their spare time, or the feignedly rebellious ventilations of the privileged classes descanting on their boutique spirituality. There is no doubt that the Scientific Revolution established a categorically different way of understanding nature and our place in it. The “disenchantment of the world” swiftly began to displace from the world its supernatural realities and spiritual forces with the fully explicable world of immutable natural laws and causal mechanism. The magic at work in the Harry Potter (HP) series has more in common with these principles of modern science than with the historical magic that anthropologists study. The correspondence between HP magic and modern science can also be found when we examine the nature of science’s twin: technology. And because the magic in HP is functionally equivalent to technology, Rowling has placed in our hands a tool with which to critically examine technology in our world from a fresh perspective.

• Uncovering the Prejudice in Modern Science and Theology

  Georgia State University

  (Master's Thesis) Prejudice, as theorized by Hans-Georg Gadamer, is a cognitive condition common to all humans that must be uncovered and confronted before projects that aim to synthesize philosophy, science, and religion begin. In science, the Prejudice has been challenged by the discoveries of modern physics; however, other fields of science remain devoted to the paradigm of the Prejudice. In theology, the Prejudice dominates modern Christian understandings of the text and interpretation succumbs to its authority. I propose that Galileo may be the first fundamentalist insofar as he applied flexible interpretations of biblical texts that seemed in conflict with his empirical findings. The criticisms of the Prejudice by Gadamer, Owen Barfield, and Ken Wilber, support my effort to lay a groundwork for post-Prejudice hermeneutics. We must experience a “felt change of consciousness” from the Prejudice and once again understand ourselves as participating with phenomena in all of their empirical, rational, and spiritual aspects.

• Kierkegaard's Mirror (of Erised)

  Reason Papers 34(1)

  The Mirror of Erised appears twice in the Harry Potter series, both times in Sorcerer’s Stone. This evocative magical object is one of J. K. Rowling’s many delightful creations in the imagined world she has authored. It has been the subject of literary and philosophical analysis, particularly with respect to epistemology and the psychology and philosophy of desire. In this article I will present and defend an existentialist interpretation of the Mirror of Erised. The Mirror symbolizes the human predicament of existential despair, and within the Harry Potter series functions as an instrument of existential diagnosis and catalyst for the birth of genuine subjectivity. The Mirror confronts the viewer with the self’s strongest point of attachment to the aesthetic stage of life and therefore the chief obstacle to be overcome in the task of attaining true selfhood..

• The Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics: A Phenomenological Investigation

  University of Kentucky

  This dissertation is a phenomenological investigation of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The primary subject matter for description and analysis is scientific instruments and their use in experiments which elicit the measurement problem. A methodological critique is mounted against the ontological commitments taken for granted in the canonical interpretations of quantum theory and the scientific activity of measurement as the necessary interface between theoretical interest and perceptual results. I argue that an aesthetic dimension of reality functions as a proto-scientific establishment of sense-making that constantly operates to set integratively all other cognitively neat determinations, including scientifically rendered objects that are intrinsically non-visualizable. The way in which data "key in"​ to the original and originative register of the sensible in observation is clarified by examining prostheses, measuring apparatuses and instruments that are sense-conveying and -integrative with the human sensorium. Quantum measurement is a praxic-dynamic activity and homologically structured and structuring functional engagement whose desideratum is spatiotemporal differentiation. The capaciousness of Nature and the way in which we are integratively set within Nature in a materiality-phenomenality correlation discloses Nature's constituent potential, a condition more primitive than causal interplay. Finally, the relation between a physical mechanism or process and its functional mathematical representation is clarified. No physical mechanism or process accounts for the empirical effects of measurement outcomes in some quantum mechanical experiments. Within the milieu of ordinary perceptual experience, complete with its horizonal structure of spatiality and temporality, something uncaused is encountered which resists full determination in terms of mathematical representation.

• Technological Anarchism: The Meaning of Magic in Harry Potter

  Unlocking Press

  History textbooks that acknowledge humans used to believe in magic invariably do so in order to isolate magical thinking and experience to prescientific ages. Magical belief, so the conventional story goes, was common during humanity’s period of intellectual immaturity but now that we have scientific explanations for scary and wonderful things magical beliefs are no longer appropriate for serious, clear-thinking people. Magic, if it is regarded seriously at all, is little more than a quaint subject about which an eccentric historian or anthropologist muse over in their spare time, or the feignedly rebellious ventilations of the privileged classes descanting on their boutique spirituality. There is no doubt that the Scientific Revolution established a categorically different way of understanding nature and our place in it. The “disenchantment of the world” swiftly began to displace from the world its supernatural realities and spiritual forces with the fully explicable world of immutable natural laws and causal mechanism. The magic at work in the Harry Potter (HP) series has more in common with these principles of modern science than with the historical magic that anthropologists study. The correspondence between HP magic and modern science can also be found when we examine the nature of science’s twin: technology. And because the magic in HP is functionally equivalent to technology, Rowling has placed in our hands a tool with which to critically examine technology in our world from a fresh perspective.

• Uncovering the Prejudice in Modern Science and Theology

  Georgia State University

  (Master's Thesis) Prejudice, as theorized by Hans-Georg Gadamer, is a cognitive condition common to all humans that must be uncovered and confronted before projects that aim to synthesize philosophy, science, and religion begin. In science, the Prejudice has been challenged by the discoveries of modern physics; however, other fields of science remain devoted to the paradigm of the Prejudice. In theology, the Prejudice dominates modern Christian understandings of the text and interpretation succumbs to its authority. I propose that Galileo may be the first fundamentalist insofar as he applied flexible interpretations of biblical texts that seemed in conflict with his empirical findings. The criticisms of the Prejudice by Gadamer, Owen Barfield, and Ken Wilber, support my effort to lay a groundwork for post-Prejudice hermeneutics. We must experience a “felt change of consciousness” from the Prejudice and once again understand ourselves as participating with phenomena in all of their empirical, rational, and spiritual aspects.

• Kierkegaard's Mirror (of Erised)

  Reason Papers 34(1)

  The Mirror of Erised appears twice in the Harry Potter series, both times in Sorcerer’s Stone. This evocative magical object is one of J. K. Rowling’s many delightful creations in the imagined world she has authored. It has been the subject of literary and philosophical analysis, particularly with respect to epistemology and the psychology and philosophy of desire. In this article I will present and defend an existentialist interpretation of the Mirror of Erised. The Mirror symbolizes the human predicament of existential despair, and within the Harry Potter series functions as an instrument of existential diagnosis and catalyst for the birth of genuine subjectivity. The Mirror confronts the viewer with the self’s strongest point of attachment to the aesthetic stage of life and therefore the chief obstacle to be overcome in the task of attaining true selfhood..

• Folktale Structure, Aesthetic Satisfaction, and the Success of Harry Potter

  Ravenclaw Reader: The St Andrews University Harry Potter Conference

  By the time the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, Goblet of Fire, had been consumed by the reading public in 2001, academe had begun to respond to the global Potter phenomenon and started constructing a significant body of secondary literature. Whilst this literature is multidisciplinary the research more or less coalesces into two scholarly areas with their attendant questions: what are we to make of Potter as a literary achievement and as a cultural phenomenon? In their own ways and with their own methods, the question that drives both of these investigations and persists into the present day is this: “Why has the Harry Potter series of books been so popular?” This is the explicit question to be answered in this essay, and to do so we have developed an hypothesis based on the theory and methods of formalist folklorist Vladimir Propp.

• The Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics: A Phenomenological Investigation

  University of Kentucky

  This dissertation is a phenomenological investigation of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The primary subject matter for description and analysis is scientific instruments and their use in experiments which elicit the measurement problem. A methodological critique is mounted against the ontological commitments taken for granted in the canonical interpretations of quantum theory and the scientific activity of measurement as the necessary interface between theoretical interest and perceptual results. I argue that an aesthetic dimension of reality functions as a proto-scientific establishment of sense-making that constantly operates to set integratively all other cognitively neat determinations, including scientifically rendered objects that are intrinsically non-visualizable. The way in which data "key in"​ to the original and originative register of the sensible in observation is clarified by examining prostheses, measuring apparatuses and instruments that are sense-conveying and -integrative with the human sensorium. Quantum measurement is a praxic-dynamic activity and homologically structured and structuring functional engagement whose desideratum is spatiotemporal differentiation. The capaciousness of Nature and the way in which we are integratively set within Nature in a materiality-phenomenality correlation discloses Nature's constituent potential, a condition more primitive than causal interplay. Finally, the relation between a physical mechanism or process and its functional mathematical representation is clarified. No physical mechanism or process accounts for the empirical effects of measurement outcomes in some quantum mechanical experiments. Within the milieu of ordinary perceptual experience, complete with its horizonal structure of spatiality and temporality, something uncaused is encountered which resists full determination in terms of mathematical representation.

• Technological Anarchism: The Meaning of Magic in Harry Potter

  Unlocking Press

  History textbooks that acknowledge humans used to believe in magic invariably do so in order to isolate magical thinking and experience to prescientific ages. Magical belief, so the conventional story goes, was common during humanity’s period of intellectual immaturity but now that we have scientific explanations for scary and wonderful things magical beliefs are no longer appropriate for serious, clear-thinking people. Magic, if it is regarded seriously at all, is little more than a quaint subject about which an eccentric historian or anthropologist muse over in their spare time, or the feignedly rebellious ventilations of the privileged classes descanting on their boutique spirituality. There is no doubt that the Scientific Revolution established a categorically different way of understanding nature and our place in it. The “disenchantment of the world” swiftly began to displace from the world its supernatural realities and spiritual forces with the fully explicable world of immutable natural laws and causal mechanism. The magic at work in the Harry Potter (HP) series has more in common with these principles of modern science than with the historical magic that anthropologists study. The correspondence between HP magic and modern science can also be found when we examine the nature of science’s twin: technology. And because the magic in HP is functionally equivalent to technology, Rowling has placed in our hands a tool with which to critically examine technology in our world from a fresh perspective.

• Uncovering the Prejudice in Modern Science and Theology

  Georgia State University

  (Master's Thesis) Prejudice, as theorized by Hans-Georg Gadamer, is a cognitive condition common to all humans that must be uncovered and confronted before projects that aim to synthesize philosophy, science, and religion begin. In science, the Prejudice has been challenged by the discoveries of modern physics; however, other fields of science remain devoted to the paradigm of the Prejudice. In theology, the Prejudice dominates modern Christian understandings of the text and interpretation succumbs to its authority. I propose that Galileo may be the first fundamentalist insofar as he applied flexible interpretations of biblical texts that seemed in conflict with his empirical findings. The criticisms of the Prejudice by Gadamer, Owen Barfield, and Ken Wilber, support my effort to lay a groundwork for post-Prejudice hermeneutics. We must experience a “felt change of consciousness” from the Prejudice and once again understand ourselves as participating with phenomena in all of their empirical, rational, and spiritual aspects.

• Kierkegaard's Mirror (of Erised)

  Reason Papers 34(1)

  The Mirror of Erised appears twice in the Harry Potter series, both times in Sorcerer’s Stone. This evocative magical object is one of J. K. Rowling’s many delightful creations in the imagined world she has authored. It has been the subject of literary and philosophical analysis, particularly with respect to epistemology and the psychology and philosophy of desire. In this article I will present and defend an existentialist interpretation of the Mirror of Erised. The Mirror symbolizes the human predicament of existential despair, and within the Harry Potter series functions as an instrument of existential diagnosis and catalyst for the birth of genuine subjectivity. The Mirror confronts the viewer with the self’s strongest point of attachment to the aesthetic stage of life and therefore the chief obstacle to be overcome in the task of attaining true selfhood..

• Folktale Structure, Aesthetic Satisfaction, and the Success of Harry Potter

  Ravenclaw Reader: The St Andrews University Harry Potter Conference

  By the time the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, Goblet of Fire, had been consumed by the reading public in 2001, academe had begun to respond to the global Potter phenomenon and started constructing a significant body of secondary literature. Whilst this literature is multidisciplinary the research more or less coalesces into two scholarly areas with their attendant questions: what are we to make of Potter as a literary achievement and as a cultural phenomenon? In their own ways and with their own methods, the question that drives both of these investigations and persists into the present day is this: “Why has the Harry Potter series of books been so popular?” This is the explicit question to be answered in this essay, and to do so we have developed an hypothesis based on the theory and methods of formalist folklorist Vladimir Propp.