Fritänkarrörelsen, som den gestaltade sig under 1800-talets två sista decennier, är i den mån man kan tala om den som en egen rörelse relativt outforskad som sin egen helhet. Förutom några få undantag finns i första hand biografier över några av de ledande personerna inom fritänkarrörelsen, framför allt om de personer som var delaktiga i skapandet av de många stora folkrörelser som såg dagens ljus under denna tid. Folkrörelserna och ideologierna har i sina historieskildringar tagit med fritänkarna som en del av sitt ursprung. Det som kan saknas är en översiktlig genomgång av de gemensamma tankar och idéer som var centrala för dem som kallade sig själva fritänkare. Även om denna uppsats i sig inte i första hand är ett begreppsanalytiskt arbete så består en del av undersökningen av ett utredande av begrepp, översiktlig beskrivning av de olika grupperna inom fritänkeriet och dess idéinnehåll samt presentation av några av de mest tongivande agitatorerna. Många av dessa agitatorer blev aktivt motarbetade av samhället och åtalen för hädelse mot såväl kyrkan som staten var vanligt förekommande. Det hörde inte till ovanligheten att åtalen resulterade i fängelsestraff för dessa tankefrihetens förkämpar. Vad var då fritänkarnas farliga budskap och idéer som skulle komma att påverka historiens gång?

This dissertation study attempts to understand excessive buying, a phenomenon of both theoretical and practical interest. I define excessive buying as "an individual type of buying behavior whereby consumers repetitively spend more than they should based on financial considerations". I develop a conceptual typology of excessive buying, building on the time-inconsistent preferences and automaticity theory. The new typology categorizes five specific types of excessive buying behavior: 1) habitual, 2) possessive, 3) remedial, 4) rewarding, and 5) out-of-control. Based on past literature and the typology, I generate scale items to capture the conceptual and logical variance in excessive buying. Psychometric properties of the scale are tested via Confirmatory Factor Analysis using a student and random adult sample. Nomological validity of the scale is confirmed by testing hypotheses formulated based on hedonic shopping values and the self-defeating behavior theory. The empirical analyses suggest that excessive buying results from stress, using shopping as an escape from reality, and little consideration for the potential outcomes of one's current behavior. Excessive buying leas to both financial problems and negative emotions.

This project charts the emergence of the Cuban Theatre of the Absurd, or teatro del absurdo, over the course of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, its suppression by the revolutionary government, and its revival during the "Special Period" of the 1990s. Rather than understand the category as either an extension of the European Theatre of the Absurd, or as the invention of scholars intent on exporting such a schematic to Latin America, the Cuban teatro del absurdo should be recognized as a material phenomenon that evolved organically within the Havana theatre community, proposed a historically specific Cuban absurd as its object of representation, and assumed great ideological importance within the cultural and political landscape of the time. Its chief pioneer and practitioner was Virgilio Piñera, while José Triana and Antón Arrufat produced foundational absurdist works of the post-revolutionary period. Their plays and critical essays affirm the teatro del absurdo as a site of edification for audiences because of the anti-ideological nature of the works performed, and the authority these performances bestow on spectators as meaning creators. Because the teatro del absurdo opened conceptual space for difference in reception, while also operating as a cosmopolitan margin where European influences were incorporated within plays that spoke to the absurdity of Cuba's socio-political reality, it posed a threat to the univocal ideological control of the revolutionary government. The absurdo's resonance during the Special Period and within contemporary Cuban theatre is a testament to its enduring viability as a dynamic form that allows multiple truths and voices to be heard. Chapter one of the study explores the critical archive surrounding both the European Theatre of the Absurd and the Theatre of the Absurd in Latin America and Cuba. It argues that, rather than discard the category as imperfect or perpetuate a paradigm that privileges text over performance, critics should account for its unique ideological currency within the specific context of pre and post-revolutionary Cuba by tracking the material extension of the term and the works subsumed by it within Havana's theatre and performance archive. Chapter two investigates the historical basis of the Cuban absurdo, localizable in the concept of choteo, and maps the concept's valence in the context of 19th century teatro bufo as well as Piñera's early theatre of the 1940s and 50s. Chapter three considers the role of the teatro del absurdo in post-revolutionary Cuba by examining works by Piñera, Triana and Arrufat in conjunction with their critical essays of the time, in order to capture the political significance of the genre as a zone of dissidence and opposition to the total system of the revolution. Chapter four tracks the revival of the teatro del absurdo as a source of endurance during the privation of the Special Period of the 1990s. The re-emergence of voices like Piñera's signaled a return to a past of provocation and confrontation in order to generate a future in which space for difference would be preserved. / text

According to the dominant tradition in Christianity and many other religions, human beings are both knowers and actors: beings with conscious beliefs about the world who sometimes act intentionally guided by these beliefs. According to philosopher of mind Robert Cummins the “received view” among philosophers of mind is epiphenomenalism, according to which mental causation does not exist: neural events are the underlying causes of both behavior and belief which explains the correlation (not causation) between belief and behavior. Beliefs do not, in virtue of their semantic content, enter the causal chain leading to action, beliefs are always the endpoint of a causal chain. If that is true the theological anthropology of many religious traditions is false. JP Moreland draws attention to two different ways of doing metaphysics: serious metaphysics and shopping-list metaphysics. The difference is that the former involves not only the attempt to describe  the phenomena one encounter, it also involves the attempt of locating them, that is explaining how the phenomena is possible and came to be given the constraints of a certain worldview. For a physicalist these constraints include the atomic theory of matter and the theories of physical, chemical and biological evolution.   Mental properties are challenging phenomena to locate within a physicalist worldview, and some physicalists involved in “serious metaphysics” have therefore eliminated them from their worldview. Most however accept them, advocating “non-reductive physicalism” according to which mental properties supervene on physical processes. Even if one allow mental properties to supervene on physical processes, the problem of mental causation remains. If mental properties are irreducible to and therefore distinct from physical properties, as the non-reductive physicalists claim, they cannot exert causal powers if one accepts the causal closure of the physical domain – which one must, if one is a “serious physicalist” according to physicalist philosopher of mind Jaegwon Kim.   Alvin Plantinga, in his Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism, shows that if mental properties, such as the propositional content of beliefs, are causally inefficacious, then evolution has not been selecting cognitive faculties that are reliable, in the sense of being conducive to true beliefs. If the content of our beliefs does not affect our behavior, the content of our belief is irrelevant from an evolutionary standpoint, and so the content-producing part of our cognitive faculties are irrelevant from an evolutionary standpoint. The “reliability” – truth-conduciveness – of our cognitive faculties can therefore not be explained by evolution, and therefore not located within the physicalist worldview. The only way in which the reliability of our cognitive faculties can be located is if propositional content is relevant for behavior.   If we however eliminate or deny the reliability of our cognitive faculties, then we have abandoned any chance of making a rational case for our position, as that would presuppose the reliability that we are denying. But if propositional content is causally efficacious, then that either – if we are non-reductive physicalists and mental properties are taken to be irreducible to physical properties – implies that the causal closure of the physical domain is false or - if we are reductive physicalists and not eliminativists regarding mental properties - it shows that matter qua matter can govern itself by rational argumentation, in which we have a pan-/localpsychistic view of matter. Either way, we have essentially abandoned physicalism in the process of locating the reliability of our cognitive faculties within a physicalist worldview. We have also affirmed the theological anthropology of Christianity, in so far as the capacity for knowledge and rational action is concerned. Keywords: Philosophy of mind, mental causation, reductionism, physicalism, the evolutionary argument against naturalism, the myth of nonreductive materialism, Alvin Plantinga, Jaegwon Kim

Hur ser ungdomar på framtiden? Vilka drömmar finns och hur ska de förverkligas? Med denna undersökning vill jag ta reda på vilka värderingar ungdomar har idag. För att finna svar har sextio ungdomar deltagit i en enkätundersökning. Av dessa ungdomar har jag valt att intervjua sex personer med olika värderingar. Ronald Ingleharts teori om materialism/postmaterialism har använts som analysinstrument. Jag har också jämfört mina slutsatser med liknande undersökningar. Huvudresultatet av denna studie är att ungdomar har en stark framtidstro när det gäller den egna personen. I större sammanhang är de mer pessimistiska. Ungdomar upplever att den individuella prestationen är helt avgörande för den egna framgången, de känner också oro över ett eventuellt misslyckande. Undersökningen visar också att det finns både materialistiska och postmaterialistiska värderingar i den unga generationen.

This dissertation project explored the privileging of knowledge production in science and technology as a Canadian national economic, political and social strategy. The project incorporated the relationship between nation-state knowledge production and how that knowledge is then systematically evaluated, prioritized and validated by systems of health technology assessment (HTA). The entry point into the analysis and this dissertation project was the Scientific Research and Experimental Design (SR&ED) federal tax incentive program as the cornerstone of science and technology knowledge production in Canada. The method of inquiry and analysis examined the submission documents submitted by key stakeholders across the country, representing public, private and academic standpoints, during the public consultation process conducted from 2007 to 2008 and how each of these standpoints is hooked into the public policy interests and institutional structures that produce knowledge in science and technology. Key public meetings, including the public information sessions facilitated by the Canada Revenue Agency and private industry conferences, provided context and guidance regarding the current pervasive public and policy interests that direct and drive the policy debates. Finally, the “Innovation Canada: A Call to Action Review of Federal Support to Research and Development: Expert Panel Report,” commonly referred to as “The Jenkins Report” (Jenkins et al., 2011), was critically evaluated as the expected predictor of future public policy changes associated with the SR&ED program and the future implications for the production of knowledge in science and technology. The method of inquiry and analytical lens was a materialist approach that drew on the inspiring frameworks of such scholars as Dorothy Smith, Michel Foucault, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Melinda Cooper, and, Gilles Deleuze. Ultimately, I strove to illuminate the normalizing force and power of knowledge production in science and technology, and the disciplines and structures that encompass it and are hooked into it where the privileging of such knowledge becomes hegemonic within and by the regimes of knowledge production that created them.

This dissertation project explored the privileging of knowledge production in science and technology as a Canadian national economic, political and social strategy. The project incorporated the relationship between nation-state knowledge production and how that knowledge is then systematically evaluated, prioritized and validated by systems of health technology assessment (HTA). The entry point into the analysis and this dissertation project was the Scientific Research and Experimental Design (SR&ED) federal tax incentive program as the cornerstone of science and technology knowledge production in Canada. The method of inquiry and analysis examined the submission documents submitted by key stakeholders across the country, representing public, private and academic standpoints, during the public consultation process conducted from 2007 to 2008 and how each of these standpoints is hooked into the public policy interests and institutional structures that produce knowledge in science and technology. Key public meetings, including the public information sessions facilitated by the Canada Revenue Agency and private industry conferences, provided context and guidance regarding the current pervasive public and policy interests that direct and drive the policy debates. Finally, the “Innovation Canada: A Call to Action Review of Federal Support to Research and Development: Expert Panel Report,” commonly referred to as “The Jenkins Report” (Jenkins et al., 2011), was critically evaluated as the expected predictor of future public policy changes associated with the SR&ED program and the future implications for the production of knowledge in science and technology. The method of inquiry and analytical lens was a materialist approach that drew on the inspiring frameworks of such scholars as Dorothy Smith, Michel Foucault, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Melinda Cooper, and, Gilles Deleuze. Ultimately, I strove to illuminate the normalizing force and power of knowledge production in science and technology, and the disciplines and structures that encompass it and are hooked into it where the privileging of such knowledge becomes hegemonic within and by the regimes of knowledge production that created them.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Communication, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-71).

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2005-06-28Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:44:22Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 ulbanere_a_me_ia.pdf: 2169241 bytes, checksum: 6831d68b53ef115571d0696868229fd2 (MD5) / Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) / Este trabalho busca compreender o pensamento sobre a Linguagem Musical do compositor Willy Corrêa de Oliveira a partir de transcrições das aulas do curso Linguagem e Estruturação Musicais, ministrado por ele no Departamento de Música da Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA) da Universidade de São Paulo (USP). O autor desta dissertação parte de trechos de aulas para encontrar relações desse pensamento com a Filosofia Marxista e com diversas teorias e metodologias que resultam em uma maneira de entender a idéia por trás das notas, característica de suas análises. O materialismo-dialético é compreendido no pensamento de Willy a partir da prática e de uma consciência histórica marxista. Esses também seriam os pontos de ligação entre a teoria marxista e outras, como a fenomenologia, a hermenêutica e a semiótica, no caso. As transcrições encontram-se integrais nos Anexos. Assim, o pensamento musical de um compositor brasileiro contemporâneo torna-se disponível e acessível para os que buscam trilhar os mesmos caminhos. / This work aims to understand the musical thought of composer Willy Corrêa de Oliveira from transcriptions of a course named Musical Language and Structure taught by him at Music Department of Arts and Communication School of University of São Paulo. Author works from takes of registered classes to relate this thought to Marxist Philosophy and other theories and methodologies resulting in a way of understanding the idea behind the notes, which is one of its characterizes. Dialectic-materialism is understood in Willy's thought from practice and a Marxistconscience of History. These would be the basis to join Marxist theory to others, like Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Semiotics, in this case. All transcriptions are part of this work. Thus, musical thought of a Brazilian contemporary composer is accessible for those who go by the same track.

Resitué dans le contexte original, L’Écrit Beaubourg, le mot «moviment » s’avère emblématique des pratiques poétiques de Ponge. ll incarne en un seul mot deux éléments fondamentaux 1 le jeu de décalage et de rapprochement des choses différentes, et la matérialité du moyen d’expression. Sous le principe de l’éloge paradoxal, ces caractéristiques permettent la synthèse textuelle des éléments contradictoires, notamment le temps et l’espace, l’abstrait et le concret. Ajouté à cette animation intellectuelle, les textes se meuvent dans leur composition comme un corps organique, en tant que composants fragmentaires de l’œuvre du poète. Dans les écrits sur l’art, Ponge procède également à l’éloge paradoxal en corrélation avec son appréhension de l’art plastique qui transforme l’émotion temporelle et personnelle en matière substantielle et communicative. C’est justement dans ces «poèmes de circonstance>> que se manifestent ses poétiques les plus contradictoires, celle de l’abstraction concrète et concise, et celle de la monumentalité dans le mouvement. Entre l’épaisseur des mots et la surface plane de la page, le poète les met en œuvre particulièrement dans ses journaux poétiques sur les objets d’espace 1 La Fabrique du pré et La Table. Suggérant la forme musicale « moment », et la forme spatiale parallélépipédique par le segment « ment », le « moviment » concrétise la poésie à trois dimensions, qui, à l’instar du Centre Pompidou, conserve la mémoire collective langagière en la renouvelant sans cesse par le biais de l’incitation à la mise en pratique de la parole. / Replaced in its original context, L Ecrit Beaubourg, the word “movement” appears to be a symbol of Ponge’s poetical practice. ln one only word it associates two fundamental elements: a play with the divergence and association of various things, and the materialism of the expression mode. On the basis of the paradoxical praise, these characteristics allow the making of a textual synthesis of contradictory elements, in particular of time and space, of the abstract and the concrete. Added to this intellectual vitality, the texts evolve in their composition like an organic body, as fragmentary constituents of Ponge’s work. ln his writings on art, he carries out also the paradoxical praise in accordance with his approach of plastic arts which convert temporal subjective emotions into substantial communicable materials. lt is precisely in his ‘poemes de circonstance’ (occasional poems) that his most contradictory poetics appear: that of concrete concise abstraction and that of monumentality in movement. ln between the thickness of the words and the flat surface of the pages, Ponge makes use of them particularly in his poetic diaries: La Fabrique du pré and La Table. Suggesting the musical form “moment”, and the parallelepiped spatial form by the segment “ment”, “movement” embodies the three-dimensional poetry, which keeps, as the Pompidou Center, the collective memory of words, revitalizing it constantly through the encouragement to practical applications of language.