Lucretius’ symmetry argument is always understood as a simple addition to Epicurus’ deprivation argument. Both are based on same presuppositions and both are referring to the state of being dead. However, by closer examination, we can see that they are using different perspectives. The symmetry argument adopts a first-person perspective, whereas the deprivation argument adopts a third-person perspective. According to this difference, it can be further inferred that the symmetry argument actually provides a very important supplemental argument for the deprivation argument by trying to bridge the potential gap in the deprivation argument.

Réduit à sa plus simple expression, ce travail de recherche met face à face deux acteurs s’affrontant dans un duel philosophique : le physicalisme et l’argument de la connaissance de Franck Jackson. La question clé autour de laquelle s’agencera notre discussion ici est (1) Est-il vrai que « Tout est physique » ? Le coeur de la thèse que nous défendons peut être résumé ainsi : (T) Le clivage post-platonicien (tacite) entre les formes objectivées et les formes subjectivées de la pensée, provoque des fossés explicatifs (explicites), qui sont franchis (très souvent) via des sauts conceptuels (mystérieux), intercalés entre les étapes d’une argumentation. Il sera argumenté ici que la distribution actuelle des débats sur l’axe états physiques (objectifs) / états qualitatifs (subjectifs) subit une pression souterraine post-platonicienne. Conséquemment, une bonne partie de l’énergie des penseurs actuels est dépensée à la recherche du « bon saut » ou « crochet » conceptuel permettant d’attacher les rives du mental à celui du physique. Nous soutiendrons que le coeur du problème ne consiste pas à résoudre le différend entre les physicalistes et les avocats des qualia, mais plutôt à trouver la réponse à la question : pourquoi en sommes-nous arrivés là, i.e., à ce clivage sur l’axe phénoménal/physique ? / “Everything is physical” physicalists claim. “Everything except qualia” reply the defenders of the Knowledge Argument. This thesis argues that both parties to this debate are committed to a traditional picture according to which one can tacitly adopt the standpoint of an off-stage narrator, capable of distinguishing ab initio between the different items in this conceptual scenario. The main claim here is that every time we artificially introduce a sharp conceptual distinction separating these two items or levels (mental and physical), we must automatically make a sophisticated conceptual leap in order to link the first-person qualitative perspective with the external physical world. Thus the physicalism/qualia dispute is only a by-product of an extended theoretical conception of the mind/world link which entails two distinct kinds of problems: (i) structural problems (to define and determine conceptually dual items like thought/matter, reason/senses, subject/object, etc.). Such problems require us to question “how are these items supposed to work together?” and this leads us to the second group of problems: (ii) mediation problems. The first group of problems inevitably leads to explanatory gaps; the second ends up needing to appeal to conceptual leaps in order to ensure the necessary link between two separate items. This exerts a powerful influence over the cast of our thoughts: seen from this angle, all philosophical enterprise comes down to the question of where to place the three following parameters: the world as it is, the conceptual picture which aims to represent the world as it is and the theorist-painter gifted with the ability to capture the world picture as it is. We also face the problem of finding the right mediators to assure coherence among the members of this trio, and the problem of setting the valid criteria guaranteeing the theorist-painter that what is captured on his conceptual canvas does indeed correspond to the world as it is, i.e. that he is not laboring under the delusions of an evil genie. In this thesis I argue against this way of putting things.

Algebra är ett grundläggande nyckelområde inom matematiken och tillsammans med matematisk resonemangsförmåga essentiellt inom skolan för elevers utveckling av matematisk färdighet. Studien analyserar gymnasieelevers kollektiva algebraiska resonemang vid algebraisk uppgiftslösning med avseende på resonemangsargumentens förankring i matematiska egenskaper, samt det algebraiska tänkande som indikeras av dessa. Resultatet visar att eleverna över lag för resonemang utifrån matematisk grund, med undantag av slutsatsernas utvärdering, och att även om uppgiftens matematiska innehåll är relevant för stimulerande av matematiskt grundat resonemang kan argumentationen indikera olika aspekter på algebraiskt tänkande beroende på elevernas lösningskonstruktion. Studien särskiljer sig gentemot tidigare forskning vilken företrädelsevis har inriktat sig på karaktärisering av individuellt resonemang i olika typer och vid studier av kollektivt resonemang har man fokuserat på yngre elever. Det studien också bidrar med är en beskrivning av hur elever kan skapa resonemang tillsammans, och identifierar en ny typ av argument, konventionella argument, kopplade till frågor om notation. Diskussionen berör bland annat vikten av förståelse för den matematik på vilken elever grundar sitt resonemang, som en aspekt att anpassa undervisning efter.

Ever since they were formulated in the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas' famous Five Ways to demonstrate the existence of God have been frequently debated. During this process there have been several misconceptions of what Aquinas actually meant, especially when discussing his cosmological arguments. While previous researchers have managed to tease out why Aquinas accepts some infinite regresses and rejects others, I attempt to add on to this by demonstrating the centrality of his metaphysics in his argument from motion. Aquinas cannot be properly understood or debated with a contemporary view of causality, but rather must wrestle with the concepts he actually employs in the arguments. To demonstrate this, I will compare the Thomistic argument from motion to the contemporary Kalām cosmological argument of William Lane Craig. Although some may consider it beneficial to base theistic arguments on more modern principles, this analysis shows that the metaphysical framework used by Aquinas is much less vulnerable to the rebuttals that otherwise challenge the Kalām argument, and that their differences in strength rest on their differences in metaphysics.

This study focuses on the predicate argument structure (PAS) of a sub-class of verbs in Xitsonga - verbs of change of possession: give, contribute, future having, providing, obtaining and verbs of exchange. It is shown that these verbs select various theta roles to form their PAS in the different alternations allowed in this language. The effects of the applicative {-el-} and causative {-is-} verbal affixes on the PAS of such verbs are also considered. The study confirms the fact that the ordering of objects in ditransitive verbs is determined by an interplay of syntactic and semantic factors. Ambiguity arises in the case of two animate objects. In this case the object with a definite reading will appear adjacent to the verb. / African Languages / M. A. (Arican Languages)

This study focuses on the predicate argument structure (PAS) of a sub-class of verbs in Xitsonga - verbs of change of possession: give, contribute, future having, providing, obtaining and verbs of exchange. It is shown that these verbs select various theta roles to form their PAS in the different alternations allowed in this language. The effects of the applicative {-el-} and causative {-is-} verbal affixes on the PAS of such verbs are also considered. The study confirms the fact that the ordering of objects in ditransitive verbs is determined by an interplay of syntactic and semantic factors. Ambiguity arises in the case of two animate objects. In this case the object with a definite reading will appear adjacent to the verb. / African Languages / M. A. (Arican Languages)

L'argument de la connaissance de Frank Jackson est l'un des arguments les plus célèbres en philosophie analytique. Son objectif est de démontrer que certains de nos états mentaux, nommément les états mentaux associés à l'effet que cela fait de percevoir ou de ressentir, ou qualia, ne peuvent pas être expliqués par une conception exclusivement matérialiste de l'esprit. L'argument de la connaissance s'inscrit dans une famille d'arguments en philosophie de l'esprit qui soulèvent le débat jamais résolu entre matérialisme et dualisme. Depuis sa parution en 1982, l'argument de la connaissance de Jackson a suscité de nombreuses réponses de la part des matérialistes qui ont tenté de le réfuter. Jackson lui-même s'est laissé convaincre par certaines de ces réponses et en 1998, il a finalement renoncé à son célèbre argument. Ce mémoire a pour objectif de présenter une classification des réponses adressées à l'argument de la connaissance ainsi qu'une analyse de chacune d'entre elles. Cette analyse permet de montrer que la seule réponse adéquate à l'argument de la connaissance est celle formulée par Jackson lui-même lorsqu'il a rejeté son argument. Ce mémoire montre également que la réponse de Jackson permet d'entrevoir une réfutation adéquate à tout un ensemble d'arguments dualistes en philosophie de l'esprit.

Natural languages are systems of forms and meanings; language understanding and language production are processes of establishing mappings between linguistic forms and meanings. The principles and rules governing the mapping between semantic roles and syntactic positions have long been a fundamental topic in contemporary linguistics. Such a mapping is usually called argument realization, argument mapping or argument linking. On the basis of the previous language specific and cross linguistic researches on this issue, this thesis picks out two tasks. One is the empirical task of the investigating the principles and rules governing the mapping between semantic roles and linear syntactic positions in Mandarin Chinese. The other is the theoretical task of the exploration of how argument realization principles and rules play their roles in the live temporal linear comprehension and production of sentences. On the empirical side, this thesis mainly investigates the phenomenon of argument alternation, that is, the non-one-to-one mapping between semantic roles and syntactic forms (linear positions) in Mandarin and argues that alternative syntactic forms in which semantic roles are realized are not arbitrary but semantically motivated. More specifically, it proposes that alternative patterns of argument realization encode different types of events. This thesis concentrates on three major cases of argument alternation. The first is the argument alternation in the resultative verb construction (RVC) that involves two verbs and expresses a complex event consisting of a first (activity) subevent and a second (resultative) subevent. The arguments of the two verbs are mapped onto the subject and the object alternatively and the argument sharing between the verbs results from syntactically constrained pragmatic inference. The argument realization principles and rules of RVC are used to account for two puzzling cases of argument alternation in Mandarin, i.e. the locative alternation and the agentive alternation. This account of inverse argument realizations has the implication that argument alternations are semantically motivated rather than the result of arbitrary syntactic operation. To facilitate the discussion of how different semantic representations arise in different process of comprehension, I adopt Dynamic Syntax (Kempson et al 2001; Cann et al 2005) which provides a package of working hypotheses about human language grammars and the formal tools for representing how grammars work. It is hypothesized in Dynamic Syntax that the grammar of a natural language is a set of constraints over language comprehension; sentences are understood and produced in context through left-to-right word-by-word parsing processes. Parsing processes are driven by the axiomatic requirement of establishing complete logical forms that can be enriched to full propositions. Such processes have the characteristic of semantic underspecification, including underspecified semantic relationships and underspecified semantic contents; semantic underspecification can and must be updated through non-demonstrative inference implemented in linguistic and nonlinguistic contexts. Using the framework I hypothesize that in RVC constructions the first verb provides a condition on the sort of event expressed by the second verb, encoding this in terms of event semantics. It is argued that only the argument of the latter are required to be realized in the string (or be contextually strongly determined) through pro-drop. Those of the activity predicate, however, are inferred through pragmatic means given the arguments that are realized. This directly accounts for the attested patterns of argument realization in RVC and explain the apparent gaps. This analysis is extended to locative and agentive inversion constructions where it is hypothesized that there is null resultative predicate that explains why a non-agent can be realized as subject, even in the presence of a more agentive noun phrase in the string. This thesis thus maintains the hypothesis that the mapping between semantic roles and syntactic positions is direct though not one-to-one. Although there is no one-toone mapping between syntactic forms, the argument mapping rules can ensure efficient comprehension and production when they are applied in context. This thesis provides a uniform account of different argument alternation phenomena that have been seen as unrelated to each other in the literature. The successful uniform explanation of the ‘unrelated’ phenomena of argument alternation can be generalized as a methodology: a thorough semantic analysis of various alternative syntactic constructions can reveal the subtle semantic differences between them and the importance of these subtle semantic difference for a theorectic account of argumenty alternation has been largely underestimated in the literature. This constitutes the foundation of a uniform explanation of syntactic phenomena that seem to be unrelated to each other. This success lights the hope of seeking semantics-based uniform accounts of other different kinds of syntactic phenomena in a single language and across languages in future research.

This thesis examines possible philosophies to account for the practice of mathematics, exploring the metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological outcomes of each possible theory. Through a study of the two most probable ideas, mathematical platonism and fictionalism, I focus on the compelling argument for platonism given by an appeal to the sciences. The Indispensability Argument establishes the power of explanation seen in the relationship between mathematics and empirical science. Cases of this explanatory power illustrate how we might have reason to believe in the existence of mathematical entities present within our best scientific theories. The second half of this discussion surveys Newtonian Cosmology and other inconsistent theories as they pose issues that have received insignificant attention within the philosophy of mathematics. The application of these inconsistent theories raises questions about the effectiveness of mathematics to model physical systems.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects and persuasive mechanisms of expository and narrative HPV vaccine messages targeted toward young men. The researcher used the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HPV facts for men as a framework for the expository message condition. He also created two similar but distinct narratives that focused on HPV and men. The first narrative was informed by narrative persuasion studies in the social sciences and was labeled the academic narrative. The second narrative incorporated important elements of storytelling from literary theory and was labeled the classic narrative. A comparison condition, which presented a testimonial from a testicular cancer survivor, was also employed to compare against the effectiveness of the three experimental conditions. In the experiment, 258 men ages 18-26 were assigned randomly to the expository, academic narrative, classic narrative, or comparison conditions. Outcome measures related to the persuasive effects of the messages were attitudes toward talking to healthcare providers about the HPV vaccine and receptiveness to the HPV vaccine. Outcome measures related to the persuasive mechanisms of expository messages were argument strength, source credibility, and emotional arousal. Outcome measures related to the persuasive mechanisms of narrative messages were perceived realism, transportation, identification, and emotional arousal. Hypotheses predicted that argument strength and source credibility would predict changes in knowledge, attitudes, and vaccine receptiveness in the expository condition, whereas perceived realism, transportation, and identification would predict similar changes in the narrative conditions. An additional hypothesis predicted that emotional arousal would affect the persuasion process differently in the expository and narrative conditions. Results indicated that transportation, identification, and emotional arousal were stronger in the narrative conditions, but these variables did not predict persuasive outcomes. Conversely, perceived realism and source credibility had unexpected persuasive effects in both expository and narrative conditions. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.