Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Philosophy, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala University, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-156) and index.

Orientador: Gabbi Junior, Osmyr Faria / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-13T15:15:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marques_BeatrizSorrentino_M.pdf: 793198 bytes, checksum: f5135824464f5b2dac819b554ce05c8d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: A distinção entre pessoas e coisas materiais, para P. F. Strawson em seu livro Individuals, guia a discussão sobre o que são pessoas e como as identificamos e nos referimos a elas. No entanto, a tentativa de fazer esta distinção chama a atenção para a necessidade da reflexibilidade do si mesmo, capaz de identificar si mesmo e outros como sendo pessoas. Paul Ricoeur explicita em seu livro Soi-même comme un autre como a designação de si desenvolve a compreensão da noção de si mesmo. A referência aos particulares de base que auxiliaria em sua distinção de coisas ocorre na linguagem, entretanto, ao levar em consideração atos de fala, que remetem à capacidade de designar a si na interlocução, surge a necessidade de considerar a ação como o principal aspecto que diferencia pessoas de coisas, como Strawson aponta em sua teoria. A ação expõe a distinção entre a espontaneidade com a qual o agente interfere no mundo, por meio de seu corpo, e a ocorrência de eventos de acordo com leis da natureza. Assim, a ação traz a dimensão da ética para o agente ao apontar o seu poder de agir. Por fim, a narrativa ajuda a designar uma ação ao seu agente, pois a ação faz parte da trama que o agente constrói, e contar algo é contar quem fez o que numa história em que o personagem apresenta uma constância. Dadas estas considerações, o presente estudo avalia dois casos de narrativas literárias para constatar se os seres não humanos que as compõem são pessoas ou não / Abstract: For P. F. Strawson, in his book Individuals, the distinction between persons and material things guides the argument over what persons are and how we identify and refer to them. However, tryning to point out the distinction calls atention to the need of the self's reflectivity, capable of identifying onself and another as persons. Paul Ricoeur elucidates in his book Soi-même Comme un Autre how self ascription develops our understanding of the self. The reference to basic particulars that should help distinguishing things happens through language, though, when we consider speech acts, which refere to the self designation capacity in interlocution, we realise the need to consider action as the key aspect which distinguishes persons from things, as Strawson poits out in his theory. Action exposes the distinction between the agente's spontaneous interference in the world, through his body, and the ocurrence of events in acordance with laws of nature. By way of his power to act, action brings to the agent a ethical dimension. Narrative helps ascribing an action to it's agent, since the action is a part of the plot the agent constructs, and to tell something is to tell who did what in a narrative where the character presents constancy. Based on these considerations, the present essay studies two literary cases to decide if the non-human beings preset on these narratives are persons or not. Key Words: Basic Particulars, Oneself, Intentional Action, Self-ascription, Own Body / Mestrado / Filosofia / Mestre em Filosofia

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I examine the relation between the action of producing a change (kinêsis) in something else and the action of exercising one’s nature or craft (energeia). I call for the distinction between kinêsis and energeia by arguing that in Metaphysics IX.1-5 change should be construed as a transformational change that is still characterized in accordance with the categories, whereas in Met. IX.6-9 the action of exercising of one’s nature or craft should be construed as the presence of a state or an action that exhibits one’s nature or craft, which is meant to be a way of characterizing that-which-is (to on) that goes beyond the categories. Instead of the conventional patient-centered account of change, I argue that Phys. III.3 and V.4 suggest a non-patient-centered account of change and that the agent’s acting-upon (poiêsis) should also be construed as a non-self-contained change, just as the patient’s being-acted-upon (pathêsis), and therefore cannot be conflated with exercising one’s nature or craft. I also point out that a genuine Aristotelian event cannot be composed of the agent’s acting-upon and the patient’s being-acted-upon. I argue that Phys. VII.3 suggests a two-way relation between the action of producing a change in something else and the action of exhibiting one’s own nature, based on which I outline a hylomorphic proposal that a genuine Aristotelian event is composed of the action of producing a change in something else as the material part of the event and the action of exhibiting one’s own nature as the formal part of the event. While the former provides the material necessitation force from the bottom up to the occurrence of the event, the latter provides the formal constraint force from the top down to the occurrence of the event. / text

The following thesis can be read as a socio-historical case study of the emergence of risk discourses within the Scottish Criminal Justice System, particularly in relation to offenders who are defined by their dangerousness. It focuses on the emergence of the Risk Management Authority (RMA) which was set up under recommendation of the MacLean Committee in 2000. The thesis examines the broader social and cultural forces from which the Risk Management Authority emerged by drawing on Hegel’s notion of ‘Ethical Life’ (Sittlichkeit) as a means of framing institutional change. By way of a re-interpretation of Hegel, through the lens of critical theory, it seeks to historicise and make problematic the concepts and assumptions surrounding our understanding of modernity. Through the concepts of reflexivity, legitimacy and indeterminacy it offers a critique of the existing sociology of risk, which places risk at the centre of debates on modernity, contingency and the self-understanding of society. This critique offers a conceptualisation of penal institutions as not just administering punishment, but as instrumental in the constitution of human subjectivity.

This thesis concerns the question of what it is for a subject to act. It answers this question in three steps. The first step is taken by arguing that any satisfactory answer must build on the idea that an action is something predicable of the acting subject. The second step is taken by arguing in support of an answer which does build on this idea, and does so by introducing the idea that acting is doing something which is an exercise of a particular kind of disposition on the part of the acting subject. The third step is taken by arguing that the disposition in question must be of a kind which is exercised in conditions in which the acting subject thinks they are acting. From this vantage point the thesis develops many further commitments: That action is constitutively subject to a mode of explanation that mentions the kind of disposition just mentioned; that any case of acting requires a veridical representation of a means by which the action is performed; and that a problem about the underspecified nature of desire ascriptions can be solved by appeal to the conceptual materials made available by these investigations. The thesis finally develops several objections to the account it gives, both substantive and methodological, and explains why these objections ought to be rejected.