Arbitrary Marks

As promised, here are some of the questions brought to my thesis this past week.  Since I don’t expect this post to be useful to many people apart from me, I’m continuing the details below the fold.

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The defense was a success (ie, I passed).  Later, I’ll put up some of the questions I fielded and talk about the adjustments I’ll need to make to the paper to put it into final form.  Apparently it’s customary to have a few changes to make–it doesn’t wreck my whole thesis.  The entire ordeal (although it [...]

This post is Part 1 because I won’t be defending my thesis until tomorrow.  However, my brain decided that I needed a dry run last night between 2 and 3 am.  In addition to my actual thesis committee, comprised of Berit Brogaard, John McGinnis, Robert Northcott, and Theodore Vitali, seated at a long conference table [...]

You can find my final thesis online at the Arbitrary Marks essay page.  I’d like to thank Dwayne Tunstall for his helpful comments via email, as well as Dwight and Philocrites, who have helped me along in my understanding of Process Thought.
I’m no expert in A.N. Whitehead or John Cobb, Jr. (and definitely not Charles [...]

The thesis which I began this summer is pushing past forty pages and nearing its conclusion. Right now, the draft version which is available to you online has some gaping holes, which I’ve been working to patch. At this point, I’m writing the conclusion to the question of whether John Cobb, Jr.’s project [...]

I’m revising my thesis, which has sat quietly and patiently for several months while I’ve played with other texts.  The summer break was useful, because I learned a lot about Buddhism, including the fact that I am not going to go on to do my Ph.D. in the field.  It’s funny how academic reading can [...]

I’ll be revising my thesis this weekend and submitting it as a first draft to my committee on Monday.  Anyone who wants to give some feedback is welcome to do so here.  You can also, if you feel like sparing me public humiliation, also email me at arbitrary [_dot_] marks [_at_] gmail [_dot_] com.  No [...]

Okay, here’s what it all comes down to. On my laptop, I have a first draft of my thesis. It turned out to be shorter than I expected–which I’m not sure whether to be grateful or nervous about. I did look up the writings of one of my committee members on Whitehead, [...]

An update on the ever-growing block that is my thesis. (That’s a little metaphysics joke there, you can stop laughing now.)  I’ve arrived at the center third of my paper, where I unpack my contention that Process Thought’s metaphysics conflicts with Buddhist metaphysics.  I am defending a weak thesis, as I don’t consider this a [...]

From “Beyond ‘Pluralism’” in Transforming Christianity and the World:
My goal is to transform contradictory statements into different but not contradictory ones.  My assumption is that what is positively intended by those who have lived, thought, and felt deeply is likely to be true, whereas their formulations are likely to exclude truths that should not be [...]