by Chow Wai Yin. / Thesis (M.Div.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-81). / Acknowledgments / Abstract / Introduction --- p.1 / Section 1 / Chapter Chapter 1 --- A brief history of biblical interpretation development --- p.5 / Chapter 1. --- A brief historical development of biblical interpretation --- p.5 / Chapter 1.1. --- Biblical interpretation in the early church: Hermeneutics of Tradition / Chapter 1.2. --- Biblical interpretation in the modern age: Hermeneutics of Understanding / Chapter 1.3. --- Biblical interpretation in the contemporary world: Hermeneutics of Existence / Chapter 2. --- The development of the notion of textuality from the early church to contemporary discussion --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1. --- Author is the only meaning of the text / Chapter 2.2. --- Readers are part of the texts / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Ricoeur's theory of text --- p.14 / Chapter 1. --- Background to Ricoeur's philosophy --- p.14 / Chapter 1.1. --- Garbriel Marcel / Chapter 1.2. --- German philosophy / Chapter 2. --- Phase I: Symbols and Hermeneutics --- p.15 / Chapter 2.1. --- The starting point of Ricoeur's hermeneutics: Hermeneutics of Suspicion and Hermeneutics of Retrieval / Chapter 2.2. --- The structure of symbol: Symbol and Hermeneutics / Chapter 3. --- Phase II: Texts and Hermeneutics --- p.19 / Chapter 3.1. --- Sassure's language system / Chapter 3.2. --- Opposed language system by Discourse / Chapter 3.3. --- The traits of a text / Chapter 4. --- The interpretative process of the text --- p.25 / Section 2 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Contributions of Ricoeur's 'referentiality' to protestant evangelical's understanding of revelation --- p.28 / Chapter 1. --- Protestant evangelical's understanding of revelation --- p.28 / Chapter 1.1. --- Protestant evangelical's understanding of revelation is in relation to the bible / Chapter 1.2. --- Criticism of the propositional of revelation / Chapter 2. --- Ricoeur's understanding on revelation --- p.30 / Chapter 2.1. --- The nature of biblical texts / Chapter 2.2. --- Can revelation through biblical texts include the notion of inter- personal address from God? / Chapter 2.3. --- Truth is embedded in poetic language / Chapter 3. --- Religious language Vs poetic language --- p.37 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Contributions of Ricoeur's theory of text to Historical-critical approach --- p.40 / Chapter 1. --- The Historical-critical approach --- p.40 / Chapter 2. --- Ricoeur's view of history --- p.43 / Chapter 2.1. --- History is the work of emplotment / Chapter 2.2. --- The nature of historical narrative / Chapter 3. --- Ricoeur's view of historical narrative in the bible --- p.48 / Chapter 4. --- The discrepancy between Ricoeur's understanding of the role of the reader and that in historical-critical approach --- p.50 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Contributions of Ricoeur's theory of text to Bultmann's demythologization --- p.52 / Chapter 1. --- Bultmann's general interpretation --- p.52 / Chapter 2. --- From general hermeneutics to specifically theological hermeneutics --- p.53 / Chapter 3. --- Bultmann's view of myth and demythologization --- p.53 / Chapter 3.1. --- Bultmann's view of myth / Chapter 3.2. --- The role of kerygma / Chapter 4. --- A critique of Bultmann's demythologization from Ricoeur's theory of text --- p.58 / Chapter 4.1. --- The distanciation of the kerygma / Chapter 4.2. --- Understanding without explanation / Chapter 4.3. --- The problem of mythological and nonmythological language / Chapter 5. --- The role of myth in Ricoeur's hermeneutical theory --- p.61 / Chapter 6. --- General hermeneutics or theological hermeneutics? --- p.63 / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.66 / Chapter 1 --- A conclusion of Ricoeur's theory of text --- p.66 / Chapter 2. --- Contributions of Ricoeur's theory of text to biblical interpretation --- p.74 / Bibliography --- p.78

The management of genomic diversity is important within breeding programs and is primarily achieved through controlling the rate of inbreeding. A failure to adequately manage the rate of inbreeding will result in an increased risk of the expression of lethal recessive mutations, inbreeding depression and losses in genetic variance, thereby restricting long-term genetic progress. Each research chapter within this thesis used real data collected from a commercial pig breeding operation to examine a key area of research regarding the management of genomic diversity. The first research chapter examined the selection outcomes from the practical application of Optimal Contributions (OC). These outcomes were examined to determine their alignment with the current theories regarding selection, particularly as to the extent by which selection decisions were influenced by estimated Mendelian sampling terms. This assessment was conducted for the initial selection of individuals as parents, which parents went on to provide a long-term contribution and the magnitude of these contributions. OC was shown to have shifted breeding decisions more closely in alignment with the estimated Mendelian sampling terms. The second research chapter used genomic data to assess the adequacy of the pedigree-based approach for managing diversity during selection. This approach assumes the infinitesimal model with all loci neutral and no impact from selection per se on heterozygosity. Using genomic information, the observed loss of heterozygosity at each marker was compared to the loss of heterozygosity expected from the pedigree-based relationships. Regional disparities between the observed and expected losses in heterozygosity were detected, which were potentially attributable to selection. Runs of homozygosity and the pairwise linkage disequilibrium between markers were also examined within these regions. Regions showing disparity were found to contain well validated quantitative trait loci for important traits. The third research chapter sought to provide a genomic solution to the shortcomings of the pedigree-based approach for quantifying relatedness, identified above. A methodology was devised for tracing identity by descent (IBD) at each allelic position over five ancestral generations, following phasing and imputation of the genomic data. A comparison was made between the inbreeding expected from the pedigree relationships and that observed from the identity by descent of genomic information. In the population studied it was not currently feasible to derive a relationship matrix based exclusively on observed IBD. The fourth research chapter used imputed genomic information to identify haplotypes which had a putative lethal recessive effect. Haplotypes which were never observed in the homozygous form, either in the population or in the offspring produced between carriers, were classified as candidate haplotypes. The top candidates on each chromosome were then examined for a reduction in the total number born when two carriers were mated together. A total of six putative lethal recessive haplotypes were detected relating to at least four putative lethal recessive mutations, where one homozygote was absent and the size of the reduction in litter size matched that expected for a lethal recessive effect. The research chapters contained within this thesis demonstrate the important role that genomics can have in managing inbreeding in addition to generating genetic gain. Genomics is able to provide a more accurate prediction of the Mendelian sampling term, better quantify the relatedness between individuals and detect lethal recessive effects.

William James came of age at a time of great social and intellectual change in the United States. During this period, new professional identities proliferated, and a new culture of professionalization developed with important ramifications for conceptions of individual and social identity. Professionalization was also closely related to key intellectual developments of the time, such as the application of scientific methods to social and human questions and the consolidation of intellectual work within the university. This thesis chronicles James's struggle to find a place within this society that both satisfied his personal desire for individual growth and freedom and established him within the context of professional academia, arguing that James's difficulties in finding a professional identity were inseparable from his development of a unique intellectual voice. The thesis then explores how James expressed his personal identity and insights in his work as professional academic and psychologist. / Graduation date: 2003

A strong version of the Humean theory of motivation (HTM) that includes two theses is defended here. First, desire is necessary for action, and no mental states are necessary for action other than a desire and an appropriate means-end belief. Second, desires can be changed as the conclusion of reasoning only if a desire is among the premises of the reasoning. Those who hold that moral judgments are beliefs with intrinsic motivational force cannot accept HTM, even as a contingent truth, since HTM implies that no beliefs have intrinsic motivational force. Many of them argue that there are cases where HTM fails to explain how we deliberate. The response is to develop a novel account of desire and show that HTM provides superior explanations even in their cases. On this account, desire necessarily motivates action when combined with an appropriate means-end belief. Desire necessarily causes pleasure when our subjective probability of satisfaction increases or when we vividly imagine satisfaction, and likewise causes displeasure when the subjective probability of satisfaction decreases or when we vividly imagine dissatisfaction. It is contingently true that desire directs attention towards things one associates with its object, is made more violent by vivid sensory or imaginative representations of its object, comes in the two flavors of positive desire and aversion, and satisfies the second principle above. This account of desire helps HTM provides superior explanations of deliberation even in the cases that its opponents offer as counterexamples. In response to Darwall’s proposed counterexample to the second principle and some 20th century writers discussing the feeling of obligation, it is shown that Humeans can provide superior explanations of agents’ emotions in their cases. In Searle’s case of akrasia, Scanlon’s case of bracketing, and Schueler’s case of deliberation, it is shown that Humeans can build the structures of deliberation more simply than their opponents can. Against Korsgaard, it is argued that agents cannot choose the aims for which they act. / text

No description available.

The purpose of the thesis is to situate John Locke's political ideas in the context of the debate of the late seventeenth-century. In recent scholarship, it is argued that Locke held only a marginal position in the debate. However, this view is improper; there were rich intellectual exchanges between Locke and his contemporaries. They shared strong concern with modes of communication and those of moral cultivation, and a set of concepts in terms of which these issues were discussed. The thesis examines similarities and dissimilarities between Locke's ideas and those of four of his contemporaries: Edward Stillingfleet, Algernon Sidney, Samuel Pufendorf, and William Temple. Through this analysis the thesis shows both the significance and the limit of Locke's liberal ideas in the late seventeenth-century.

No description available.

This work is an effort to develop an interpretative framework for Kant's political philosophy that will illuminate not merely the political philosophy itself, but will have the additional advantage of showing the integral rather than the peripheral connexion of that philosophy with Kant's wider philosophical concerns. In this sense the essay is not an extended explication or critical commentary on Kant's political theory so much as an attempt to establish a context within which such commentary might proceed. The context which is suggested is Kant's anthropology, that is to say, his concept of persons, a notion which is foundational to both his political philosophy and the entire Critical philosophy. The difficulty with such an approach is that Kant no where develops in an explicit and extended fashion his concept of persons, and thus the essay is in one way an effort of recovery, first from the historical accounts of human origins and progress, next from the teleological theories of the third Critique and the Anthropology, then from the doctrine of man as end, and finally from Religion, of a systematic account of what Kant believes persons to be. In all of these diverse efforts to make sense of man, it is argued that Kant's central concept for discussing persons is the idea of freedom, though depending on the context this notion is often linked to another, for instance, in the historical works with Nature, in the Groundwork with reason and morality, and in Religion with evil. Thus all of these other ideas become either extensions of or elucidations of freedom. The idea of Freedom as the foundation of personhood is, however, given its most crucial role in Kant's characterization of persons as ends in themselves. It is this doctrine which is foundational for much of subsequent Western political theory, and which is essential for Kant's political and moral theory. Chapters Three, Four, and Five are thus the core of the essay in that they suggest first that Kant's very strong claims about persons as ends will not work in terms of his own arguments and are rendered even more conceptually suspect in light of his subsequent account of radical evil, and second an alternative reading, proposed by Kant if not finally entirely accepted by him which might provide a more plausible foundation for his basic insights about persons.

An examination is made of important influences that shaped both the development of Plato's religious and philosophical teachings/theories of the Soul and Spirit which were based on core Spiritual Laws or Principles, and his scheme of education as outlined in the Republic. Included are Plato's early years and the teachings and influence of Socrates and the Orphic, Pythagorean and Eleusinian Mystery Schools. Plato's system of education is shown to be very much influenced by the Pythagoreans, to involve the 'Principle of Initiation' and to be soul-centered, where all thought is related to 'The One'. The conclusion is that the philosophy and teaching of education today tends to ignore the important integrative principle of unity--the Soul/Spirit connection. A renewed philosophy and scheme of education is introduced incorporating a vision of the whole person.

This study seeks to establish a working definition of contributions, related to older adults, from the perspective of stakeholder groups (elders, caregivers to elders, practitioners, and policy makers). A secondary content analysis was conducted on 4 group interviews of stakeholder groups. Findings supported the conceptual framework of the Welfare Diamond, whereby elders make contributions to various sectors that constitute society. Further, stakeholders identified invisible contributions, as well as the darker side of making contributions, as important elements of contribution. Findings help to establish an inclusive definition of contribution and to highlight where more research may be needed. / Aging