My thesis examines Dubliners through the lens of Rene Descartes’s mind-body dualism to explain the relationship between contrasting themes in the text and demonstrate how they are connected. In an explication of the three words introduced by Joyce in the introductory paragraph of the first story in his collection, namely paralysis, gnomon, and simony, linking them with their more subtle but equally significant antonymic themes, which I propose are progression, epiphany, and grace, I show that Joyce was as compassionate as he was contemptuous of his countrymen. I propose that recognizing this balance helps us better understand what Joyce may have meant by making no apology for the brute-like spectacle he projects in his nicely polished looking-glass. Moreover, I argue that Dubliners serves as a fictional canvas upon which Joyce projects his dream of an Ireland that can transcend the tedium-inducing confines of its past.

Thesis advisor: Marilee Ogren / The suggestion of a mind-brain duality that emerges out of Descartes’ cogito argument is assessed in the context of twenty-first century neuroscience. The Cartesian texts are explored in order to qualify the extent to which the cogito necessitates such dualism and the functions that Descartes attributes to a non-corporeal soul are precisely defined. The relationship between the mind and brain is explored in the context of a number neuroscientific phenomena, including sensory perception, blindsight, amusia, phantom limb syndrome, frontal lobe lesions, and the neurodevelopmental disorder Williams syndrome, with an attempt to illuminate the physiological basis for each. Juxtaposing the two perspectives, the author concludes that Descartes hypothesis of a disembodied soul is no longer necessary and that a purely physiological understanding of the human mind is now possible, and that there is an underlying affinity between this assertion and Descartes theory of mind. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Psychology.

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This essay explores the application of zoomorphism and anthropomorphism in Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi. The novel, rather than being a mere shipwreck-narrative or a miraculous tale with religious overtones, is also a story about the complicated and perhaps inevitably divided relationship between humans and animals. This essay introduces the fields of ecocriticism and animal studies and defines anthropomorphism and zoomorphism in the context of literary criticism. The essay goes on to discuss the layers of meaning behind the names and naming of the two main characters using Burke’s rhetoric of identification, analyses the anthropomorphism and religiosity in the novel’s two stories, and analyses the two accepted readings of the novel from a zoomorphic perspective. The essay looks at the human-animal divide and its problems in literature, going into Derrida’s animal philosophy to provide a counterpoint to a view derived from Cartesian dualism. In a straight reading of the novel, the first story is regarded as metaphoric while the second story is regarded as literal. There is an alternative reading where it is left to the reader to decide which story is true, but this essay argues that this reading negates a metaphoric interpretation of either story and therefore dismisses the straight reading. Instead, this essay proposes a third, zoomorphic reading, fully compatible with the straight reading, where anthropomorphism is employed to externalize human actions onto animals, but where zoomorphism is employed to project animals onto humans in order to externalize their cannibalism. In the zoomorphic reading, both stories are interpreted as vehicles of projection while avoiding the logical pitfall of the alternative reading.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-10T18:26:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Geder P Friedrich Cominetti.pdf: 1360851 bytes, checksum: f57b49982d341a630b5b9800d36c6e69 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-08-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Descartes did not write a philosophy of language. A few quotes about this topic generate many interpretations. Most of the language studies in Descartes produce anachronisms or are originated by comparisons with other conceptions, without being led, primarily, by an analysis of the thought about the Cartesian language concept. However, the topic proved to be productive in speculations about the interaction between the human mind and body, which is very discussed by specialists and aggressively attacked by his opposers. Characterized as a Cartesian dualism essay, this study dares to separate the language in two parts, analyzing singly its material aspect, and then its immaterial aspect. This new approach turns the reader s attention to the importance of the material aspect of the language, substantiating the objectivity of the language in the extended substances. The communication only becomes possible because there is, among two or more men, the extension. This concept is classified as the objective aspect of the language, because it is generally in the area of the sensitive experience, apart from the individual and perceptible thought of the men. Concerning the subjective aspect, each individual has a free will and he can make his own thoughts. Indeed, it is in this way that Descartes conceives the language: having the men as the creator of the words meaning, which are represented and implemented by modification of the extension. In addition, he conceives the linguistics signs as representations of thoughts, as explicitness of the internal events of men. Their speech is the explicitness of their thoughts. Therefore, when looking at a set of graphic symbols that he produced, the individual realizes the movement of his thought. These revelations that the mind uses the body as a help in the searching for the truth, because, in the body, the memory can be used as a notebook of the mind demonstrate that the Cartesian dualistic conception of the language helped Descartes in his work on algebra and in his mathematical and scientific discoveries. In conclusion, it is possible to say that the topic has no end in the next pages, but it opens a new route for researchers devote their efforts to investigate the relations between mind and body. This study dares to be completely original in its approach, in the presented problem, but it does not want to bring the reader more than a deepening, at his limit, interpretation of one of the most commented writers in philosophy in the last three centuries. / Descartes não escreveu uma filosofia da linguagem. Algumas poucas citações acerca do tema dão margem a muitas interpretações. A maioria dos estudos sobre a linguagem em Descartes comete anacronismos ou é gerida por comparações com outras concepções, deixando de proceder primordialmente por uma análise do pensamento cartesiano sobre a noção de linguagem. Contudo, este tema se mostra muito fecundo em especulações sobre a interação entre corpo e alma, que é polemizada por especialistas e atacada com agressividade por seus opositores. Caracterizado como um ensaio sobre o dualismo cartesiano, este trabalho ousa seccionar a linguagem de maneira bifurcada, analisando separadamente o seu aspecto material, por um lado, e seu aspecto imaterial, por outro. Esta abordagem inédita volta a atenção do leitor para a importância do aspecto material da linguagem ao fundamentar a objetividade da linguagem na matéria extensa. A comunicação só se torna possível porque há, entre dois ou mais homens, a extensão. Esta é classificada como sendo o aspecto objetivo da linguagem, pois está comumente no campo da experiência sensível, independentemente do pensamento individual e perceptível do homem. Com relação ao aspecto subjetivo, cada homem possui um livre arbítrio e pode compor seus próprios pensamentos. De fato, é assim que Descartes concebe a linguagem, tendo o homem como autor da significação das palavras, representadas e objetivadas através de modificações da extensão. Ademais, Descartes concebe os sinais linguísticos como representações do pensamento, como explicitação das ocorrências internas do homem. O discurso deste é a explicitação de seu pensamento. Por isto que, ao olhar um conjunto de símbolos gráficos que produziu, o homem percebe o movimento de seu pensamento. Revelações como estas de a mente se utilizar do corpo como um auxílio na busca da verdade, já que no corpo a memória pode servir como um caderno de notas da mente mostram que a concepção cartesiana dualista da linguagem auxiliou Descartes em seus trabalhos de álgebra e em suas descobertas científicas e matemáticas. Em suma, é possível afirmar que o tema não se esgota nas páginas que seguem, mas ele abre uma nova via para que pesquisadores se detenham a investigar as relações entre alma e corpo. Este trabalho tem a ousadia de ser completamente original em sua abordagem, no problema que se coloca, mas não quer trazer ao leitor mais que um aprofundamento, em seus limites, da interpretação de um dos autores mais comentados em filosofia nos últimos três séculos.

This thesis brings together a fascination with the city and a keen interest in the knowledge process. The point of departure is the bodily, sensory and emotional experience. That the author uses her own perceptions and experiences and is preoccupied with her own knowledge process means that she writes herself into an autoethnographic context. She also experiments with the writing and allows it to take on a more literary form as she writes about her own sensory impressions and feelings. The term rhythmanalysis is employed as a way of assessing, exploring, interpreting and understanding the world that embraces the embodied experience. Human beings are embodied beings, a claim we can make by referring to our own experiences as well as how we perceive, communicate and interact. The study delves into two aspects of rhythmanalysis, first as a way of describing the knowledge process as rhythm-analytical, which implies that bodily experiences are equally important as intellectual ones, and secondly as a way of talking about the city as polyrhythmic. It follows upon the latter that embodied rhythmanalysis of the city is possible. The rhythmanalysis may ultimately be seen as a project aimed at overthrowing the Cartesian dualism between body and mind. That we are embodied has a methodological consequence that is as simple as it is essential: the scholar exists in the world she studies. The researcher is not a neutral observer. She is a co-creator. She is a body, placed in time, space and history. She is situated, which means that her knowledge is also situated. Thus, the rhythmanalysis encompasses the body, the senses and feelings, and can be described with one key word: movement. It finds support in theories that acknowledge the fluid, the becoming, the situated, the performative, the relational, the dynamic, the material. It seeks methods that experiment, that focus on practices rather than discourses, that are preoccupied with a movable world rather than a static one.

The philosophical literature on akrasia and/or weakness of the will tends to focus on individual actions, removed from their wider socio-political context. This is problematic because actions, when removed from their wider context, can seem absurd or irrational when they may, in fact, be completely rational or, at least, coherent. Much of akrasia's apparent mystery or absurdity is eliminated when people's behaviours are considered within their cultural and political context. I apply theories from the social and behavioural sciences to a particular behaviour in order to show where the philosophical literature on akrasia and/or weakness of the will is insightful and where it is lacking. The problem used as the basis for my analysis is obesity caused by overeating. On the whole, I conclude that our intuitions about agency are unreliable, that we may have good reasons to overeat and/or neglect our health, and that willpower is, to some degree, a matter of luck. / Graduate / 0630 / 0573 / 0422 / felshereeno@aol.com