Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / A political arrangement is an arrangement for persons. Political arrangements are assessed in terms of the extent to which they manage the affairs of persons, which includes protecting their interests and entitlements. Political arrangements which are unable to protect the interests of its citizens, or a group of citizens, are deemed unacceptable, and where appropriate, alternative arrangements which do protect the interests and entitlements of its citizens are sought. In this thesis I argue that the political arrangement of John Rawls is unable to protect the interests and entitlements of the severely cognitively disabled who are regarded as full citizens by advanced political arrangements in the world today. I argue that it is the contract nature and conception of the person in Rawls’s system which excludes the severely cognitively disabled. This exclusion goes against our widely-held intuitions about the rights and entitlements of the severely cognitively disabled. I look to the Person Life View of Marya Schechtman, a conception of the person that includes the severely cognitively disabled, to see if a conception of the person that includes the severely cognitively disabled is able to solve the gap in Rawls’s system. I argue that it is not able to do so. I then propose a new way of approaching questions of personhood and appeal to the Aristotelian conception of the soul as the basis, arguing that membership of a type of organism typically considered a person is enough to be a complete member of that type and therefore a person.

Les savoirs contre-insurrectionnels regroupent un ensemble de documents de nature distincte : notes de travail, textes publiés, cours distribués dans les écoles de guerre, doctrines officielles ou officieuses qui constitue un « sens commun stratégique » à l’intérieur duquel se développent, se diffusent et se reproduisent les connaissances en matière de contre-insurrection. Ces savoirs cependant, ne sont pas restés ceux de l’institution militaire et ont souvent empruntés aux disciplines des sciences sociales, l’anthropologie et l’ethnologie pour commencer, les outils à même d’organiser et de formaliser leur contenu. Avec la guerre froide, ces savoirs prennent une autre dimension à mesure de leur rapprochement avec des disciplines telles que la sociologie et les théories de la communication et de l’information. Dans une perspective généalogique qui emprunte aussi bien à la tradition philosophique française qu’aux approches théoriques critiques des relations internationales ses outils méthodologiques, cette thèse montre que les savoirs contre-insurrectionnels véhiculent une représentation du monde particulière et qu’ils sont ainsi moins le produit d’un apprentissage issu de l’expérience qu’un enchevêtrement d’idéologies politiques que viennent justifier des développements scientifiques ayant vocation à promouvoir une lecture pacifiée de l’ordre social international. / The counter-insurgency knowledge encompasses a variety of documents of different nature: work notes, published pieces, courses given at military schools, official or unofficial doctrines, all of which constitutes a “strategic common sense”. This knowledge however has not been built within military institutions alone: social sciences, chiefly anthropology and ethnology, have provided suitable tools to organise and formalise its content. During the Cold War, this knowledge evolved as it drew closer to sociology and communication & information theories.The chosen genealogical perspective borrows methodological tools from the french philosophical tradition as well as from the critical approaches to international relations. This dissertation demonstrates how counter-insurgency knowledge conveys a specific world representation and that it is not as much obtained from learning and experience as it is a product of intertwined political ideologies justified by scientific demonstrations aiming at promoting a pacified view of the international world order.

De la fin des années 1860 au milieu des années 1920, un courant théologique d'opposition à la modernité s'organise à l'intérieur du protestantisme états-unien. C'est au terme de cette période que ses partisans choisissent de se désigner sous le qualificatif de fondamentalistes. Cette réaction n'est pas totalement originale, elle renoue avec les courants les plus conservateurs, non seulement des États-Unis mais aussi d'Europe. Dans cet environnement idéologique, notre enquête vise à retracer les origines de ce courant et réfléchit sur le statut de ses énoncés doctrinaux. Ce fondamentalisme primitif a été l'objet de nombreuses études, principalement anglophones, dont la plupart se sont focalisées sur le contenu des doctrines. Nous souhaitons dépasser cette dimension descriptive-normative et centrer notre recherche sur l'histoire du mouvement, le contexte de son émergence et sa problématique. Le fondamentalisme n'obéit pas seulement à une volonté d'orthodoxie. En conséquence, notre analyse a essentiellement pour objet d'interroger le rapport qu'il entretient avec ses propres croyances et le regard qu'il porte sur les opposants à sa tradition. Notre première partie correspond à la phase d'émergence du fondamentalisme au cours des années 1910 et 1920, prenant en compte les principales controverses et les publications de cette période. Notre deuxième partie s'intéresse aux racines, spécialement religieuses et philosophiques, qui ont favorisé son avènement. Les analyses de la troisième partie portent sur le modernisme protestant, mouvement d'une profonde diversité qui sera la cible du fondamentalisme. Au terme de ce travail, nous conduirons une étude comparative du fondamentalisme protestant et d'un mouvement catholique d'opposition au modernisme qui lui est contemporain. En épilogue, sur la base des sources primaires étudiées, nous proposons une définition du phénomène fondamentaliste en nous inspirant de l'histoire de ces deux dogmatismes chrétiens au début du XXe siècle. / From the late 1860s to the mid-1920s, American Protestantism saw the rise of an anti-Modern theological trend. At the end of this period, its adherents chose to call themselves Fundamentalists. This reaction was not totally unprecedented : it was a resurgence of the most conservative tendencies, not only from the United States, but also from Europe. Our research into this ideological environment attempts to trace the origins of this trend and reflect on the nature and status of its doctrinal statements. This early Fundamentalism has been the subject of many studies ; mostly in the English language, the majority of which focus on the content of its doctrines. We propose to go beyond this normative-descriptive dimension and concentrate our research on the history of the movement, the context of its genesis and related issues. Fundamentalism does not merely revolve around orthodoxy. Our analysis therefore aims to scrutinise its relationship to its own beliefs as well as the way it views those who oppose its tradition. The first part of our study relates to the initial phase of Fundamentalism from the 1910s to the 1920s, taking into account the main controversies and publications of this period. The second part looks at the roots - religious and philosophical in particular - which have favoured its emergence. The third part analyses Protestant Modernism ; an extremely diverse movement which was to be the target of fundamentalist attacks. To conclude we shall carry out a comparative study of Protestant Fundamentalism and a Catholic anti-Modernist movement of the same period. Based on original documents studied, we propose a definition of the fundamentalist phenomenon, drawing from the history of these two Christian dogmatisms of the early twentieth-century.

G.E. Moore’s argument in Proof of an External World” seems to beg the question against the skeptic and to miss the point of the challenge posed by skeptical hypotheses. I propose an interpretation that frees the argument from both charges. Starting from a distinction between the way Moore understood his dialectical position against the idealist and the skeptic, I attempt to illuminate the conception of skepticism that lies behind his argument. I propose that the argument’s core is found in a strong anti-Cartesian statement, even though its relevance for epistemology is to be found in its potential as a stance regarding justification which is closer to the problematic of Pyrrhonic skepticism. / El argumento de G.E. Moore en Prueba del mundo exterior” parece consistir en una flagrante petición de principio y adolecer de una incomprensión del  desafío  representado  por  las  hipótesis  escépticas.  Aquí  intentaremos  una interpretación que evite ambos cargos. A tal fin, distinguiré entre los modos en que Moore concibe su posición dialéctica frente a sus rivales idealistas y escépticos,  y  abordaré  la  concepción  del  problema  escéptico  que  subyace  al  planteo mooreano. Finalmente, defenderé que el núcleo del argumento consiste en una afirmación anticartesiana aun cuando su relevancia epistemológica se encuentra en  su  potencial  como  respuesta  a  una  problemática  sobre  la  justificación  más cercana a un escepticismo de tipo pirrónico.

This thesis analyzes the impact of political risk for investment decision-ing-on invest-ments into large investment projects. The failure of investors in the field of large in-vestment projects is the vast majority caused by the politic-social grounds, whose quan-tification is extremely difficult. Political risk affects economic conditions and the stabil-ity of the environment, therefore knowledge of its development is essential for the prop-er investment decisions. His predictions are quantitative level problematic. The method used qualitative modeling falls within the field of artificial intelligence and used to model the trend. The work describes the process of creating qualitative model, its inter-pretation and recommendations for use in investment decisions.

Ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) increases in proliferation. Multiple and ever growing in numbers, computational devices are now at the users' disposal throughout the physical environment, while simultaneously being effectively invisible. Consequently, a significant challenge is service discovery. Services may for instance be physical, such as printing a document, or virtual, such as communicating information. The existing solutions, such as Bluetooth and UPnP, address part of the issue, specifically low-level physical interconnectivity. Still absent are solutions for high-level challenges, such as connecting users with appropriate services. In order to provide appropriate service offerings, service discovery in Ubicomp must take the users' context, tasks, goals, intentions, and available resources into consideration. It is possible to divide the high-level service-discovery issue into two parts; inadequate service models, and insufficient common-sense models of human activities. This thesis contributes to service discovery in Ubicomp, by arguing that in order to meet these high-level challenges, a new layer is required. Furthermore, the thesis presents a prototype implementation of this new service-discovery architecture and model. The architecture consists of hardware, ontology-layer, and common-sense-layer. This work addresses the ontology and common-sense layers. Subsequently, implementation is divided into two parts; Oden and Magubi. Oden addresses the issue of inadequate service models through a combination of service-ontologies in concert with logical reasoning engines, and Magubi addresses the issue of insufficient common-sense models of human activities, by using common sense models in combination with rule engines. The synthesis of these two stages enables the system to reason about services, devices, and user expectations, as well as to make suitable connections to satisfy the users' overall goal. Designing common-sense models and service ontologies for a Ubicomp environment is a non-trivial task. Despite this, we believe that if correctly done, it might be possible to reuse at least part of the knowledge in different situations. With the ability to reason about services and human activities it is possible to decide if, how, and where to present the services to the users. The solution is intended to off-load users in diverse Ubicomp environments as well as provide a more relevant service discovery. / <p>Report code: LiU-Tek-Lic-2007:14.</p>

Introducción: Desde el registro de los primeros casos de COVID-19 en México, se han derivado una serie de respuestas emocionales caracterizadas por miedo y estrés. Dicho impacto emocional se debe en gran medida a la inundación de información paralela a las fases de la pandemia y la transición entre ellas y la percepción que los individuos tienen de la enfermedad. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue comparar la percepción del COVID-19 entre la fase 1 y 2 de la pandemia y entre los medios de información usados para informarse en población mexicana. Métodos: Considerando un muestreo en cadena, se realizó un estudio comparativo en el que se diseminó por medio de correo electrónico y redes sociales una batería de evaluación que respondieron 1560 participantes. Resultados: La preocupación por las consecuencias del COVID-19 y su impacto emocional incrementaron al pasar de la fase 1 a la fase 2 de la pandemia. Además, se identificó que el impacto emocional fue mayor en quienes se informaron a través de Facebook® y televisión. Conclusiones: La pandemia tendrá un impacto emocional progresivo en medida en que avancen sus fases y en la importancia de informarse en medios adecuados para prevenir consecuencias emocionales.

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Då antagonismen mellan öst och väst forstätter att eskalera i vårt postindustriella samhälle är det viktigt att ta reda på de bidragande faktorer som leder till en fortsatt motsättning. Det är min uppfattning att Hollywood är en bidragande faktor till denna antagonism. Det är även min åsikt att Hollywood blir påverkade av USA:s Mellanösternpolitik i utformandet av de filmer där människor från Mellanöstern och islam porträtteras.Syftet med studien är att utifrån teorier såsom orientalism, stereotypering, representation och common-sense antaganden analysera nio utvalda Hollywoodfilmer. Tre från 1960-talet, tre från 1990-talet och tre från 2000-talet för att klarlägga hur människor från Mellanöstern framställs och hur islam representeras.Syftet är även att med hjälp av Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys belysa hur samhället påverkar Hollywoods produktioner och hur dessa i sin tur påverkar samhället. Mot bakgrund av detta är Faircloughs trestegsmodell lämplig för att tydligöra det dialektiska samspel som existerar mellan samhälle och produktionen av film.Utifrån de teorier och metod som har presenterats har jag funnit att de nio utvalda filmerna framställer människor från Mellanöstern och islam på ett negativt sätt. Det har även varit möjligt att med hjälp av Faircloughs trestegsmodell tydligöra ett dialektiskt samspel mellan USA:s Mellanösternpolitik och Hollywood. / In a time when antagonistic feelings continue to escalate in our postindustrial society, it tends to be vital to look for the contributing factors to why opposition seems to continue. It is my understanding that Hollywood is one of several factors to the ongoing animosity. It is also my belief that the ongoing US Middle Eastern policy has an influence on Hollywood, which has a direct impact on the production of movies that represent people of the Middle East and Islam.The purpose if this paper is to analyze nine selected Hollywood movies using theories such as Orentalism, stereotypes, representation and common-sense assumptions. The films will be taken from three separate decades, from the 1960s, 1990s and the 2000s. The function of the investigation is to determine how people of the Middle East and Islam are being represented.Another purpose is also to establish an understanding on how society affects Hollywood productions but also how these productions in turn affect society; this will be done by using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. Fairclough’s framework for CDA is ideal in determenating the ongoing dialectical relationship between society and the production of movies.By using the theories and method formerly presented, I have concluded that when analyzing the nine selected movies, people of the Middle East and Islam are being represented in a negative manner. It has also been possible to establish that there exists a dialectical relationship between US Middle Eastern policy and Hollywood by using Fairclough’s framework for CDA.

This thesis investigates the impact of finetuning the LLaMA 33B language model on partisan news datasets, revealing negligible changes and underscoring the enduring influence of pretraining datasets on model opinions. Training nine models across nine distinct news datasets spanning three topics and two ideologies, the study found consistent demographic representation, predominantly favoring liberal, college-educated, high-income, and non-religious demographics. Interestingly, a depolarizing effect emerged from partisan news finetuning, suggesting that intense exposure to topic-specific information might lead to depolarization, irrespective of ideological alignment. Despite the exposure to contrasting viewpoints, LLaMA 33B maintained its common sense reasoning ability, showing minimal variance on evaluation metrics like Hellaswag accuracy, ARC accuracy, and TruthfulQA MC1 and MC2. These results might indicate robustness in common sense reasoning or a deficiency in synthesizing diverse contextual information. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates the resilience of high-performing language models like LLaMA 33B against targeted ideological bias, demonstrating their continued functionality and reasoning ability, even when subjected to highly partisan information environments.