What psychologial processes are activated in experiencing mourning after a loss of a belovedperson? How is death described in other authors’ novels and short stories compared to mine? This essay aims at analysing my two short stories The follower and The price for love fromdifferent aspects. I discuss the psychological realism and the spirituality using the method ofclose reading, interpreting and applying ideas of texts from other authors in my short stories. Death is a central phenomenon in both of my texts. Therefore I discuss death frompsychological and philosophical aspects in this essay. To get a philosophical frame of death Iturn to Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Heidegger. They express different opinions but important to point out is their truism that death is waiting for us all. Then I turn to Sigmund Freud, Ann-Kristin Lundmark and Lars Rönnmark to get the psychological view of death. Because of the character of the texts, I use concepts of mourning and losses from Sigmund Freud, Barbro Lennéer Axelson and Lars Rönnmark. I discuss the characters, their inner psychological processes, and relationships between persons. In this essay I indicate that mourning is a natural reaction to the loss of a beloved person. The usual mourning often follow four phases. The first phase is the chock phase, then comes the reaction phase, followed by the process phase. Finally comes the reorientation phase. The religious aspect of the stories is also explored. There my starting point is authors as Staffan Ljungman and Inger Waern, who discuss the occurrence of angels in human beings lifes. The narrator in The follower is a guardian angel, something that makes the question ofangels interesting to study. The reality aspect in the short stories is also discussed in this essay. I turn to James Wood and compare his ideas and hypotheses with my texts. James Wood present the importance of giving the reader an appearance of reality and creating vitality of the literary characters. My stories are planted in a realistic environment, the characters act and react the way real people could do in their culture and epoch. Their mourning is also similar to what human beings could experience. Therefore I come to the conclusion that my stories could regard realistic for some readers but not to other. My intention is to give the reader an atmosphere of probability. If I success is both depending on the way I send my messages as well as on the way the reader receives it. I use no special school of philosophy or psychology to analyse these texts. I analyse from the point of view of a social worker. My own conclusion of this essay is that relationships are important in my stories, as well as a capability of mourning. The religious facet is an attempt to raise the question of a possible invisible world.

Liu Chia-mo (1814-1853), a native of Houguan in Fujian, once served as an educational instructor at Ningde and a school counselor in Taiwan Prefecture during the Daoguang and Hsienfeng reigns of the Ching Dynasty. Owing to a lack of relevant literature and access to his poetry, academics have not come up with any comprehensive study concerning Liu Chia-mo, his works and his social life. Therefore, this research was intended to construct the life story of Liu Chia-mo from the first-hand historical documents including Liu Chia-mo¡¦s works¡X First Draft by Waidingmoa Bridge Recluse, Dungyang Little Grass, Sword Poetry, Wandering Ambition in Crane Pen, Guanhai Chi, Haiyin Shi, Hsieh Chang-ting¡¦s Gambling Chess Villa Collection (Shi, Wen, Tsu, Tsu Words, Notebook), and the recently discovered Gambling Chess Villa Draft, Chang Chi-liang¡¦s Chang Heng-fu Collection, Si-Po-Tzu Hall Poetry, Huang Tsung-yi¡¦s Po-Suo Poetry, and Wei Hsiu-jen¡¦s Hai-Nan-Shan Hall Poetry. This dissertation takes realism in the poetry by Liu Chia-mo as its subject. It will demonstrate his patriotism, concern over the livelihood of civilians and responsibilities and expectations for the world mainly through the textual study of First Draft by Waidingmoa Bridge Recluse, Dungyang Little Grass, Guanhai Chi and Haiyin Shi. The Introduction section consists of a literature review of Liu Chia-mo and the characteristics of his poetry of realism. Chapter One briefly describes Liu Chia-mo¡¦s historical background in the spirit of knowing the person from the world. Chapter Two explores the life of Liu Chia-mo, his publication of poetry and literature, and his literary creativity with aside from his poetry. Chapter Three deals chiefly with First Draft by Waidingmoa Bridge Recluse to study his poetry on the Sino-British Opium War. Chapter Four examines Dungyang Little Grass together with Wandering Ambition in Crane Pen to study the poetry composed during his service as an educational instructor at Ningde. Chapter Five focuses on the discussion of Guanhai Chi and Haiyin Shi, two poetic texts composed by Liu Chia-mo during his service as a school counselor in Taiwan Prefecture that address social issues in the Chinese-dominated Taiwan society during the Daoguang and Hsienfeng reigns as an effort to cure social illness and improve public morality from a perspective of observing customs. An estimated total of 1,100 poems were composed by Liu Chia-mo, whose contents range from the Opium War, Taiwanese social traditions and customs, expressions of praise for matters in painting, landscape description, and family relationships and friendship. Characterized by detailed quotations, occasional dialectal usages and transformation of vulgarity into gracefulness, they are all works that express a love of native land. In its concluding section the paper briefly considers the contents of Liu¡¦s poetry as an effort to deepen the study of Liu Chiao-mo and Taiwanese literature.

O objetivo deste trabalho é pesquisar e classificar as diversas concepções filosóficas sobre o mundo físico e a ciência em um grupo específico de físicos: professores do Instituto de Física da Universidade de São Paulo. O trabalho começou com a criação de um questionário envolvendo julgamentos ou opiniões sobre alguns assuntos da física, sempre procurando abordar conceitos fundamentais da filosofia da ciência, como verdade, realismo, reducionismo, determinismo, natureza do tempo físico, objetivos da ciência e visões religiosas. De posse desse questionário realizamos entrevistas com dez professores do Instituto de Física da USP e então partimos para as análises dessas respostas. A metodologia utilizada seguiu os princípios da pesquisa qualitativa associada à análise de conteúdo. Isso que nos permitiu o estabelecimento de critérios de classificação para as diversas concepções filosóficas encontradas nas respostas dos entrevistados e a criação de categorias que foram ilustradas com representações diagramáticas. Com esta pesquisa, pretende-se deixar abertos caminhos para que, no futuro, possam ser investigadas conexões com o ensino na sala de aula, os livros didáticos, práticas pedagógicas, estratégias de ensino, novas sequências didáticas, etc. Além disso, espera-se que essa pesquisa possa tornar-se um forte aliado no processo de ensino-aprendizagem de determinados fenômenos, influenciando também a maneira como a natureza da ciência é apresentada e como a Física é ensinada. / The aim of this study is to investigate and classify the various philosophical conceptions about the physical world and science in a specific group of physicists: teachers of the Institute of Physics at the University of São Paulo (USP). The work began with the creation of a questionnaire involving judgments or opinions on some subjects of physics, addressing fundamental concepts of philosophy of science, such as truth, realism, reductionism, determinism, nature of physical time, aims of science, and religious views. With this questionnaire, interviews were conducted with ten professors from the Institute of Physics of USP, and then an analysis of the answers was made. The methodology used followed the principles of qualitative research associated with content analysis. This enabled us to establish criteria for classification for the various philosophical concepts found in the answers of the respondents, and to create categories that were illustrated with diagrammatic representations. We hope that in the future this research can be connected to issues in classroom teaching, textbooks, teaching practices, teaching strategies, new didactic sequences, etc. In addition, we hope that this research can become a strong ally in the teaching-learning process of certain phenomena, influencing the way the nature of science is presented and how physics is taught.

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Photographic realism is an effective framework for communicating meaning. In other words, the purpose is to convey an idea--not, for example, to depict a landscape. Misuse of photographic images may arise from a photographer's deliberate attempt to imbue an image with the meaning he or she desires. Thus, we might question photography's objective nature, although this should not be confused with realism. The latter refers to the imitative or representational quality of the subject, the former refers to scientific validity or truth. The issue of objectivity suggests useful concepts for art education. First, this paper considers photographic realism--technique is not a primary concern. Second, procedures that can alter realism are made evident. By understanding and using these methods, a student can more successfully comprehend and alter the photographic message.

The thesis sets out to critique recent accounts dealing with the notion and role of ontology in IR theorising as it can be found, for instance, in Alexander Wendt and more recently in the writings of critical realists. The main aim of these treatises on ontology is to provide a new perspective for IR theory that is in line with a more general critique of epistemological foundationalism and strict empiricism. Thereby these accounts rely upon an interpretation of scientific realism as it can be found in the Philosophy of Science. The thesis shows how these approaches to ontology on the one hand overcome epistemological foundationalism but, on the other hand, reaffirm a form of ontological foundationalism through the apodictic positing of ‘intransitive objects’ that exist outside and independent of the human mind. Such an approach, rather than leading to a new and better conception of ontology, reifies the same biases of Cartesian subjectivity, the designative nature of language, a correspondence theory of truth and the problem-laden concept of freedom as it was conceived in Kant’s third antinomy. In response to these approaches whose general aim at reconceptualising ontology must be welcomed, the thesis develops a new approach that does not recreate the same problems in a different fashion but tries to overcome them through a reconceptualisation of the term ontology itself. The basis for the thesis is to be found in post-Husserlian phenomenology, a body of literature that has so far been widely ignored in IR theorising. By explicating the main tenets in the thought of such eminent philosophers as Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur the thesis reconstructs the notion of ontology on the basis of an enquiry into the meaning of being in general and human being in particular. From this perspective a new approach to the notions of agency, language, truth and freedom becomes possible without recreating the rifts and foundationalisms that characterises many approaches to social and political relations.

published_or_final_version / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

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The thesis explores the semantics of epistemic justification discourse, a very important part of overall epistemic discourse. It embarks from a critical examination of referentialist theories to arrive at a certain nonreferential, expressivist approach to the semantics of epistemic justification discourse. That is, it criticizes the main referentialist theories and then goes on to argue for an expressivist approach on the basis of its theoretical capacity to outflank the problems referentialist theories meet. In the end, I also identify some problems for a prominent expressivist theory and, as a response to these problems, propose a novel norm-expressivist approach that seems to evade these problems. In particular, in Ch.1 I introduce what I call ‘the epistemic justification puzzle’ and then in Chs.2-4 criticize naturalistic referential theories: analytic naturalistic reductionism, synthetic naturalistic reductionism and epistemic kinds realism. In Ch.5 I criticize nonnaturalist referential theories: what I call ‘naïve’ nonnaturalism and J.McDowell’s (1994) more sophisticated quietist version of nonnaturalism. Next, in Ch.6 I introduce the semantic programme of expressivism and go on to construct a simple version of epistemic norm-expressivism (inspired by A.Gibbard (1990)) in order to explain how expressivism can easily outflank the identified problems of referentialist theories. This simple norm-expressivist theory, however, is only used as a theoretical ‘toy’ for the mere sake of motivating the possibility of expressivism, as in Ch.7 I go on to argue for a more sophisticated version of norm-expressivism: habitsendorsement expressivism. In Ch.7 I introduce a prominent expressivist theory of moral and knowledge discourses, namely, plan-reliance expressivism (credited to A.Gibbard (2003, 2008)) and extend it cover the epistemic justification discourse. I then identify some problems for plan-reliance expressivism as extended to cover justification discourse and in response to these problems propose habits-endorsement expressivism. Habits-endorsement expressivism builds on the intuition that (justified) belief-fixation is habitual and exploits the theoretical flexibility of the notion of habits in order to overcome the identified problems of plan-reliance expressivism.

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