Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

New Atheism is a neologism that is explicitly linked to four public intellectuals: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. At the heart of this movement are the five books these four atheists have written specifically on the topic of religion. Throughout the New Atheist literature science is conceptualized as the most powerful force for secularization in the modern era. This thesis is a textual discourse analysis of the New Atheist literature, with a primary focus on how the themes 'secularization' and 'science' are framed. It will explore how notions of secularization and science often bleed into each other, with science being portrayed as necessarily opposed to religion. It will also highlight the New Atheists' similarities and diversities of opinion on these matters, as well as examine where their stances are located in the broader debates concerning the so-called secular/religious divide and the interactions between science and religion.

The political term "totalitarian" (totaliltario) was coined by Italian Fascism in 1925, and adopted almost simultaneously as a pejorative by the regime's opposition. This language of the Italian stato totalitario was soon adopted by the theorists of National Socialism to describe the German totale Mobilmachung and totale Staat. Postwar discussions continued to categorize Fascism by its own "totalitarian" myth of identity--of the group, race, or nation as self-constituting subject. Some other, more politically ambiguous features, however, may be discerned in fascist discourse than this "totalitarianism" which served as both fascism's narcissistic boast, and its critique. First, fascist rhetoric attempted to exclude those mimetic elements which threatened its presumed autonomy, while repressing its own implicit mimetic structure. The fascist "chameleon" represents the symptomatic re-emergence of this repression, the eruption amid a discourse of identity and autonomy of a personified figure of mimicry and deceit. The first part of the dissertation examines various accusations, denials, and examples of political chameleonism in the writings of Sorel, Gramsci, Gadda, and Malaparte, and confronts this paradigm with that of the fascist "narcissist" or "peacock" (pavone). The camaleonte/pavone relation introduces a discussion of imitation, narcissism, and identification in Freud's theorization of individual and group identity, and leads to a more directly political consideration of the relation between chameleonism, fascism, and democracy. Second, "totalitarian" regimes also characterized themselves as states in motion, referring both their "dynamism" and "modernity," and to their promotion of communication and transportation media. But this term also implies a destructuring kinetic logic contradictory to the totalitarian goal of national identity. The second part of the dissertation describes the ambiguity of political "movement" in Bertolucci's filmic rendition of Italian Fascist architecture, in the Futurist "style of movement," and in the relation between Bewegung and Bewegtheit in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. Despite what may be considered the critique of fascism begun in Sein und Zeit, Heidegger's overlooking of the ambiguity of the book's own "movement" illustrates the inconclusiveness of the gesture by which he, as well as those who have formally identified fascism and totalitarianism, have separated their own practice from their historical object.

This dissertation explores the import of Lacan's theory in critical cultural studies and examines its special contributions to an understanding of structure, ideology, and identity, especially concerning about relevant issues of ideology and identity in the condition of postmodernity. Although terms of contemporary postmodernism, such as cultural diversity and heterogeneous ideological formation, have entered our language, together with their legal and political imports, many theoretical questions and difficulties in fact still remain. By focusing on the theoretical discussion, this project tries to examine how Lacan's thinking, with philosophical and conceptual nuances, offers an alternative to reconsidering the issues of epistemological questionability and postmodernist skepticism, and the way a structure for him is formed. In addition, Lacan's formulation of psychoanalytic theory is specially illuminating in reading the notions of ideology and identity, since the psychoanalytic notion of unconscious can provide more comprehensive accounts of psychic economy that resides at the deepest level of human reality. As this work presents, Lacanian conceptual tools—such as desire, fantasy, and anxiety—constitute a new plane, a non-discursive dimension beyond the discursive discussions in widespread debates over ideology and identity. In considering cultural phenomenon in contemporary “politics of identity,” this study also investigates the political significance of Lacanian thinking through which current issues on multiculturalism, racism, and fundamentalism can be properly explained.

Bayesian Epistemology is a general framework for thinking about agents who have beliefs that come in degrees. Theories in this framework give accounts of rational belief and rational belief change, which share two key features: (i) rational belief states are represented with probability functions, and (ii) rational belief change results from the acquisition of evidence. This dissertation focuses specifically on the second feature. I pose the Evidence Question: What is it to have evidence? Before addressing this question we must have an understanding of Bayesian Epistemology. The first chapter argues that we should understand Bayesian Epistemology as giving us theories that are evaluative and not action-guiding. I reach this verdict after considering the popular ‘ought’-implies-‘can’ objection to Bayesian Epistemology. The second chapter argues that it is important for theories in Bayesian Epistemology to answer the Evidence Question, and distinguishes between internalist and externalist answers. The third and fourth chapters present and defend a specific answer to the Evidence Question. The account is inspired by reliabilist accounts of justification, and attempts to understand what it is to have evidence by appealing solely to considerations of reliability. Chapter 3 explains how to understand reliability, and how the account fits with Bayesian Epistemology, in particular, the requirement that an agent’s evidence receive probability 1. Chapter 4 responds to objections, which maintain that the account gives the wrong verdict in a variety of situations including skeptical scenarios, lottery cases, scientific cases, and cases involving inference. After slight modifications, I argue that my account has the resources to answer the objections. The fifth chapter considers the possibility of losing evidence. I show how my account can model these cases. To do so, however, we require a modification to Conditionalization, the orthodox principle governing belief change. I present such a modification. The sixth and seventh chapters propose a new understanding of Dutch Book Arguments, historically important arguments for Bayesian principles. The proposal shows that the Dutch Book Arguments for implausible principles are defective, while the ones for plausible principles are not. The final chapter is a conclusion.

Homelessness among female veterans is a problem that is likely to increase as growing numbers of women in the United States military reestablish themselves into their communities as veterans. The purpose of this quantitavie quasi-experimental study was to determine whether there are differences in posttraumatic stress (PTSD), depression, and hopelessness in homeless versus nonhomeless female veterans who have experienced at least 1 U.S. military deployment. Four theories served as the basis for this research: the cognitive theory of depression, conditioning theory, ecological theory, and the hopelessness of depression theory. The data were collected from 88 female veterans who were deployed at least once. The variables were assessed using the Posttraumatic Checklist–Military Version posttraumatic stress disorder total score,theBeck Depression Inventory-II, total score and, the Beck Hopelessness Scale total score. The 1-way MANOVA findings indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between homeless and nonhomeless female veterans who experienced PTSD and depression but not hopelessness. This research will better serve the VA, clinicians, and communities to assist providing for the psychological and mental health needs required by these soldiers. The research findings may contribute to the provision of permanent and supportive housing for female veterans reintegrating back into civilian life.

<p>Since the late 1970s, the rapidly expanding literature subsumed under the activity-based paradigm has increased significantly our understanding of urban travel behavior and provided insights into new approaches to replace current models of urban travel demand-namely, the Urban Transportation Modeling System. A basic tenet of this paradigm is that decision-making occurs in a household context, taking into account interactions among household members. This differs, however, from the reality of activity-based research to date. With few exceptions, the decision-making unit in both empirical studies and modeling efforts is the individual, not the household. In this dissertation, it is argued that there is a need to develop activity-based travel demand forecasting models at the household level. To this end, a conceptual framework is proposed for modeling daily household activity-travel behavior. This framework is developed for the heads of five common household types and consists of two modules: Activity-Episode Generation and Activity-Episode Scheduling. The statistical models underlying the former module are discussed and estimated using data from a trip diary survey conducted in the Greater Toronto Area in 1987. The Activity-Episode Generation module is then implemented as an object-oriented simulation model. This model is used to evaluate the effects of a large-scale adoption of the compressed workweek on the daily number of out-of-home activity episodes for the heads of households in the Greater Toronto Area in 1986.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

No description available.

Evolutionary psychology has recently developed out of dissatisfaction with the Standard Social Science Model utilised by mainstream psychology. This model focuses on culture and reason as the underlying cause of human behaviour and proposes that the mind is a 'general purpose learning device' (Siegert & Ward, 2002). Here the mind is seen as a blank slate at birth, which is subsequently influenced by experience, environment and culture. Biological variables are minimised or ignored. However it seems that all human behaviour cannot fully be explained by the focus on nurture in the Standard Social Science Model; sexual jealousy, parental investment, and mating preferences are examples which are not fully explained by learning or environmental experience. On the other hand, evolutionary psychology, founded on the principles of cognitive science and evolutionary biology, argues that a person's nature is the primary cause of their behaviour, with the influences of nurture being of lesser importance. According to these principles, evolutionary psychology has been very successful in providing explanations, for example in the areas of human mate selection and parental investment. However evolutionary psychology has received criticism on a number of counts, including its supposed reductionism, and, its reliance on 'just so' stories which are untestable, hypothesised scenarios which look to the past in order to explain the evolution of human behavioural features. With the above mentioned matters as background, this thesis investigated whether evolutionary psychology offers a new paradigm for integrating psychology with science, and if so, how it accomplishes this. In investigating this, conceptions of science, psychology, and evolutionary theory, in particular evolutionary psychology, were examined. More specifically, issues addresses included why evolutionary psychology is dissatisfied with the SSSM, the notion of the mind as blank slate, the nature-nurture paradigm, and the mind as a general purpose learning device. Two aspects of evolutionary theory are described, natural and sexual selection, in terms of their importance to evolutionary psychology. The main arguments of evolutionary psychology as a discipline are outlined, looking at its aims, and the ways in which it combines the disciplines of evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology toward a new integrative model for studying human behaviour. A case study demonstrates how evolutionary psychology offers a useful explanation of mate selection. This thesis then turns to the philosophy of science, setting out the differences between Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos' theories, and focusing on the latter's theory as a model of scientific philosophy which could be useful for evolutionary psychology, including discussing how this could be best achieved. This thesis then sets out various criticisms of evolutionary psychology, including the critique of domain-specific modularity, the focus on the Pleistocene period as problematic, the over-reliance on natural selection, just-so stories, the reductionism of evolutionary psychology, and that it is politically conservative. This thesis concludes that the attempt of evolutionary psychology to combine cognitive science and evolutionary theory has been successful in showing how the integration of psychology into the sciences is not only possible but inevitable.