Starting with a broad analysis of game story-telling methods, this project seeks to interrogate a player’s occupation and navigation of the possibility space of a game’s meta-narrative and isolate ‘story-telling’ techniques specific and inherent to the computer-game medium. This leads to a series of formalized design schema, on the meta-narrative – game-play relationship, to assist computer-game design practice.

Diss. Lund : Univ., 2003.

Zugl.: Dresden, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2007

Inaug.-diss.--Marburg. / Lebenslauf. "Literatur zur symbolik im deutschen volkslied": p. [5]-[7]

Universiẗat, Diss., 2004--Dortmund.

It is required for a theologian, who is committed to both faith and theology, to keep integrity in order to not lose the continuity between them. This may cause two serious inner problems. The first is with the authenticity of one’s personal faith, because the theologian, due to the theological training, no longer see the Bible in the way s/he used to do. And the other is with the vocation of contributing to the faith community, because the theologian, due to the recognition that pious expressions of faith are not technically accurate, may feel uncomfortable with using religious language especially when preaching. The first problem could be solved by establishing hermeneutical perspective on the biblical interpretation, which shows the impossibility of literalist reading of the Bible and the importance of readers’ existential self-understanding in interpretation and thus affirms diverse interpretations to be authentic. Also, one of the most distinct features of Christianity is the translatability—to translate requires interpretation—of the Bible under and into particular contexts. Accordingly, the form of Christian faith does not have to be so universal that an individual believer’s interpretation is seriously prohibited. The latter problem may be deleted if one understands the nature of symbolic language, the use of which is necessary in revealing the truth and thus enables a doubly-committed theologian to help the Church. For something ultimate and infinite can never be gripped by something contingent and finite. In so doing, however, one must bear in mind that the symbolic language also unavoidably distorts that which is symbolized.

The central argument of this project is that meaningful and intelligible experience is conditioned by the determinate relationship between realms of reality, and that our humanity is grounded on the semiotic process of symbolic references, which is manifest in Charles S. Peirce’s and Robert C. Neville’s theories of determination. However they are contained by the past such processes of determination can be extended to the future through transformative effort. My investigation ranges over multiple paths that lead toward determinate processes, by suggesting that the problem of interpretation and of the intelligibility of experience can be solved only in reference to the full purview of determinate features of experience. In his theory of determination, Peirce considered two processes of determination, the semiotic process and epistemology. The semiotic process is an extensional process from object to interpretant that consists of an infinite chain of references that can be spatially reversible. The epistemological process of determination is temporal and irreversible, where the idea grows into the individual mind, as the universe is unfolded by the agency of mind. Peirce’s study of the logic of individuals of Duns Scotus is to find answers for the problem of individuality. For Peirce, God is individualized in the course of determination and at the same time determines all possible determinations. Due to his adopting the Scotian sense of necessity, Neville also adopts Duns Scotus’s logic of individuals to his theory of determination and valuation. As revealed in his theory of determination, in the ontological act of creation God becomes individual as a creator, an individual as the determiner of all possible determinations. In his theory of determination, Neville proposes modes of determination at the ontological level, as well as a collection of cosmological determinations. Neville works “inter-cosmologically” in order to account for the fundamental conditions of our knowing that brings ontological and cosmological determinations together. In their theory of interpretation, Peirce and Neville suggest a triadic system of semiotic network. Among other things, Neville provides a more sophisticated version of theory of interpretation, which involves realms of intelligibility. Both Peirce and Neville symbolism allows for the pragmatic semiotics based upon a brokenness of signs, which opens for further interpretation.

The symbol map (of Goncharov) takes multiple polylogarithms to a tensor product space where calculations are easier, but where important differential and combinatorial properties of the multiple polylogarithm are retained. Finding linear combinations of multiple polylogarithms in the kernel of the symbol map is an effective way to attempt finding functional equations. We present and utilise methods for finding new linear combinations of multiple polylogarithms (and specifically harmonic polylogarithms) that lie in the kernel of the symbol map. During this process we introduce a new pictorial construction for calculating the symbol, namely the hook-arrow tree, which can be used to easier encode symbol calculations onto a computer. We also show how the hook-arrow tree can simplify symbol calculations where the depth of a multiple polylogarithm is lower than its weight and give explicit expressions for the symbol of depth 2 and 3 multiple polylogarithms of any weight. Using this we give the full symbol for I_{2,2,2}(x,y,z). Through similar methods we also give the full symbol of coloured multiple zeta values. We provide introductory material including the binary tree (of Goncharov) and the polygon dissection (of Gangl, Goncharov and Levin) methods of finding the symbol of a multiple polylogarithm, and give bijections between (adapted forms of) these methods and the hook-arrow tree.

In this thesis, I explore the ongoing development of symbol use in three domains: pretend play, speech and gestures. In chapter 1, the specific behavioural manifestations of symbol use in these domains are identified and previous literature that has explored the cognitive underpinnings of these abilities is discussed, with a particular focus on children's social cognition. In chapter 2, I review previous research that has sought pairwise relations between these abilities and the theoretical perspectives that have been utilised to explain these relations. In chapter 3, I introduce the four pertinent research questions that emerged from the previous review of the current literature, and provide an overview as to the methods adopted to address these issues. Chapters 4 to 6 constitute three papers designed to explore and evaluate children's symbol production in a sample of preschool children in pretend play speech and gestures. For the first paper, 38-40 month old children were given a battery of standardised measures to assess their symbolic capacities while controlling for non-verbal abilities. These data were analysed for concurrent relations between symbolic capacities. The second paper extends these concurrent relations longitudinally, by giving the children the same battery of measures six and twelve months after initial testing. Correlational and multiple regression analyses were used to assess the potential predictive relations between these measures, and whether there is a changing relation between these symbolic domains over developmental time. The third paper investigates children's iconic gesture production in further detail, by evaluating whether children aged 44-46 months incorporate the iconic gestures they observe an adult perform into their own descriptions of a novel object.Taken together, the results indicate a changing relation between the three symbolic measures of interest during the preschool years. The present findings suggest that both pretend play and gesture production are mediated by speech, but in different ways. It was also found that children appear to incorporate the gestures they observe into their own descriptions of objects but this uptake is dependent on the properties of the gesture itself. In the final chapter, these findings are discussed in relation to previous theoretical notions that place pretend play, speech and gestures as manifestations of an underlying symbolic system. I also discuss the enduring relation between these three abilities and how the pattern of predictive relations found in the present thesis can be explained. Furthermore, I discuss the ontogenesis of symbolic gesture production in children, specifically how children may use the gestures of others as a guide to their own gesture production. Finally I outline some limitations of the present research, and indicate potential avenues for future study.

(in English): The thesis is attempting to present theory of art by Susanne Langer. In the first phase it presents her view of perception, which is deeply intertwined with other processes of our mind. Therefore, the thesis is focusing, in her view of perception, on basic principles of human communication and expression, which are all regulated in perspective of this theory by a concept of a symbol. A symbol is presented here as an element, which we revive through perception on one hand and project it into the perceived at other. Therefore the attempt is accompanied by explanation of all aspects of the symbol as one of the basic units operating in the mind, before focusing on perception in general. The thesis then proceeds to narrow perception, to a perception of art, in distinguishing a discoursive and non-discoursive symbol, and a specific non-discoursive symbol in art. On the basis of this distinction, the aim is to explain how Langer views the art, art creation and its value in such a realm of symbolism. In parallel with this development, from the general perception to the definition of art, the term feeling will be increasingly employed in the text. The concept will be presented also as a necessary part of our actions, communication and perception, although feeling is commonly understood as...