Acknowledgments

There are many people to whom I feel grateful for their help in one form or another while writing this dissertation. Thanks first of all to Stephen Schiffer whose help, patience, and great philosophical sense were absolutely crucial to me. Thanks also to the other members of my dissertation committee, Hartry Field and David Rosenthal. Thanks to Stephen Stich and Richard Mendelsohn for being readers. I also thank Jerry Fodor whose encouragement has been extremely important to me. And thank you to the CUNY Graduate School for its support through a Dissertation Fellowship for 1993-1994. The discussion, encouragement, and friendship of Gary Ostertag have been invaluable to me and I warmly thank him for these. I am deeply thankful to Catherine Joos for her thoughts, support, patience, and friendship while I wrote. Thank you to my dear friend Rose Petrunich for all of her friendship and support without which I can't imagine having gotten through the past few years. And thanks to Ron Baron for his friendship and support as well. Thanks to Adam Vinueza for his friendship and the many discussions that we have had on philosophical topics through my years at CUNY. I am also deeply grateful to Amy Ruth Ullrich-Marano for her devoted friendship and support. I thank David Schauffler for our many and much-valued years of friendship and discussion. Thanks also to Tom Skwar for his friendship and support through my years at CUNY. Thanks to Ivan Bresgi who has been a great help to me for the past 8 years. I thank Hiram McLendon for the much that I have learned from him which has been indispensable to me in the writing and living of the past years. And thanks to my new friends and colleagues at MicroEdge for their encouragement and support while I made final preparations to defend my dissertation: Dov Torenberg, Ximena Florez, Evie Manieri, Lou Flees, J. P. Cheuvront, as well as the rest of the staff there. Thanks also for support and friendship to Joseph Cobitz, Robert Cowell, Elliot Feingold, Carrie Figdor, Paulette Giguere, Ching-Ching Lin, Maureen Linker, Rita Napolitano, Eleanor Williamson, and Patricia Younge.