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康德在《單純理性範圍內的宗教》一書中非常重視「思慮品格」(Gesinnung)這個概念，並把它視為所有行動的「終極基本格準」。首先，他認為一個人或道德行動者為善或是惡取決於這種「傾向」。再者，「思慮品格」在康德的行動理論中亦扮演非常重要的角色，它解釋了理性行動者作惡的可能條件。故此，「思慮品格」是評價康德關於「根本惡」以及理性行動理論的重要概念。進一步說，「道德完整」的可能性以及「道德歷程」的可理解性也都建基於此概念。因此，「思慮品格」對於康德道德哲學的整體計劃而言也甚為關鍵。儘管康德在《道德底形上學之基礎》及《實踐理性批判》兩本書中曾數度提及「思慮品格」，但這概念在康德《單純理性範圍內的宗教》之前的著作中卻似未受到充分的重視。本文將要指出，康德並非在其後期作品中才突然提出「思慮品格」這概念，事實上，在許多較早的著作中，這個關鍵的概念早已留下重要的理論線索。 / 本文嘗試指出，康德在討論《實踐理性之批判》裡的「自由範疇」理論，特別是論及「道德人格」範疇時，早已舖排有關「思慮品格」的理論。「道德人格」範疇與「思慮品格」分別為道德罪責提供智性及心理根據，而後者正是以前者作為根據。對康德而言，「道德人格」並非一個心理概念，而是實踐判斷的先驗形式，正如「實體/屬性」這個在時間中連結不同直覺之基礎的「自然範疇」一般，作為它的同位範疇 (isomorphic category)，「道德人格」是關聯個別實踐判斷的基礎。然而，我們仍然需要解釋，行動的證成理由如何推動我們的意志，因為對「有限理性行動者」而言，純粹理性並不一定具有實踐性，或者說，一個行動的證成理由並不一定是我們的動力。康德正是以「思慮品格」這個概念來闡明採納「格準」的心理基礎。當我們釐清了採納「格準」的心理基礎後，便能明白人在甚麼意義下要為自己的行動負責。本文希望能夠清楚闡明「思慮品格」與「道德人格」的關係，更希望由此說明這兩個概念以及「自由範疇表」的理論關係，並對有關問題引起更多關注和討論。 / In religion within the limit of reason alone Kant deliberately proposes the concept Gesinnung and regards it as the “ultimate underlying maxim“ of all actions. Firstly, whether a certain person or a moral agent should be regarded as good or evil depends on this ‘disposition’. Moreover, Gesinnung assumes an important role in Kant's theory of action, namely to explain how it is possible for a rational agent to act evil. It is thus an important aspect of evaluating Kant's account of radical evil and rational agency. Furthermore, the possibility of moral integrity and the intelligibility of moral progress also lie in this concept, rendering it important also in Kant's whole project of moral philosophy. Although Gesinnung appears in Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason for a few times, very little had been said about the use of the term until Religion was written. It would be strange to for Kant to propose this important concept all of a sudden without any previous clues. I shall argue that the clues can already be found in the discussion of Categories of Freedom (the category of Personality) in the Critique of Practical Reason. This thesis aims to demonstrate that the category “personality“ and Gesinnung serve to provide the rational and psychological grounds of moral imputation respectively, and that the latter arises from the foundation built from the former. The category “personality“ is not a psychological concept but an a priori form of practical judgment: as isomorphic to the categories, “personality“ serves as the ground of relating discrete practical judgments just as “subsistence and inherence“ in categories of nature serves as the ground of relating intuitions in time. But we also need a psychological ground for moral imputation to explain how the justifying reason motivates our will, as for a finite rational agent pure reason may not always be practical, i.e. the justifying reasons for certain actions may not always be our motivation for the actions. Kant uses Gesinnung as a conceptual apparatus to explain the psychological ground for the adoption of maxims and hence how we impute our actions. Through this essay, I hope that I have explained the relation between Gesinnung and “personality“ clearly and more importantly, shown that the theoretical significance of these two concepts and the table of the Categories of Freedom deserve closer attention. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Ng, Yat Kan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-121). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Table of contents --- p.v / Chapter 0.1 --- Prelude: structure of the essay --- p.1 / Chapter 1.01 --- Searching for the unchanged in the midst of changes- legacy of western philosophy --- p.3 / Chapter 1.1 --- Kant and the category of Subsistence and Inherence --- p.5 / Chapter 1.11 --- The ‘placement problem’ in the Categories of the Understanding --- p.5 / Chapter 1.111 --- Mathematical categories as a priori conditions of intuition --- p.10 / Chapter 1.2 --- “Substance and its transcendental time-determination --- p.15 / Chapter 1.3 --- Kant’s critique of the a-temporal treatment of Substance --- p.20 / Chapter 2 --- Kant’s on the problem of the personal identity: Transcendental “I“, Refutation of Idealism and brief remarks on “personality“ in the Critique of Pure Reason --- p.26 / Chapter 2.1 --- Transcendental apperception --- p.26 / Chapter 2.11 --- Kant’s refutation of idealism --- p.30 / Chapter 2.2 --- Preliminary remark: “Person and its genealogy --- p.38 / Chapter 2.21 --- Personality: Remarks from Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason --- p.41 / Chapter 3 --- Interlude: Brief accounts on the Moral Law and Autonomy --- p.45 / Chapter 3.1 --- The Moral Law 45 / Chapter 3.2 --- On autonomy: an explication on the role of “self“ in “self-legislation“ --- p.51 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Wood’s etymological mistake --- p.52 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Kant’s distinction on the “author and the “legislator“ of the law --- p.53 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Typic as a “procedure and the significance of “autos --- p.57 / Chapter 3.3 --- Intelligible noumenal character and the Empirical phenomenal character --- p.61 / Chapter 4 --- “Personality“ in Kant’s moral philosophy --- p.69 / Chapter 4.1 --- Overview of the problem --- p.69 / Chapter 4.2 --- The Categories of Freedom: a complete failure? --- p.71 / Chapter 4.3 --- “Personality as the “substratum of moral actions 85 / Chapter 5 --- The Analysis of the Will and Radical Evil --- p.94 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction: The Good Will and the Absolutely Good Will --- p.94 / Chapter 5.11 --- The Good and the Evil --- p.95 / Chapter 5.2 --- Autonomy part two: Wille and Willkür --- p.101 / Chapter 5.3 --- The Gesinnung --- p.104 / Chapter 5.31 --- Gesinnung and Personality: the psychological and rational grounds of moral imputation --- p.105 / Chapter 5.32 --- Gesinnung and Radical Evil --- p.110 / Chapter 6 --- Concluding remarks --- p.118 / Chapter 7 --- Bibliography --- p.120

Plato criticizes poetry in several of his dialogues, beginning with Apology, his first work, and ending with Laws, his last. In these dialogues, his criticism of poetry can be divided into two streams: poetry is criticized for either being divinely inspired, or because it is mimetic or imitative of reality. However, of the dialogues which criticize poetry in these ways, it is not until Laws that Plato mentions both inspiration and mimesis together, and then it is only in a few sentences. Furthermore, nowhere in the dialogues does Plato discuss their relationship. This situation has a parallel in the secondary literature. While much work has been done on inspiration or mimesis in Plato’s criticism of poetry, very little work exists which discusses the connection between them. This study examines Plato’s treatment - in the six relevant dialogues - of these two poetic elements, inspiration and mimesis, and shows that a relationship exists between them. Both can be seen to relate to two important Socratic-Platonic concerns: the care of the soul and the welfare of the state. These concerns represent a synthesis of Socratic moral philosophy with Platonic political beliefs. In the ‘inspiration’ dialogues, Ion, Apology, Meno, Phaedrus and Laws, poetic inspiration can affect the Socratic exhortation which considers the care of the individual soul. Further, as we are told in Apology, Crito and Gorgias, it is the good man, the virtuous man - the one who cares for his soul - who also cares for the welfare of the state. Therefore, in its effect on the individual soul, poetic inspiration can also indirectly affect the state. In the ‘mimesis’ dialogues, Republic and Laws, this same exhortation, on the care of the soul, is posed, but it is has now been rendered into a more Platonic form - as either the principle of specialization - the ‘one man, one job’ creed of Republic, which advances the harmony between the three elements of the soul, or as the concord between reason and emotion in Laws. While in Republic, mimesis can damage the tripartite soul's delicate balance, in Laws, mimesis in poetry is used to promote the concord. Further, in both these dialogues, poetic mimesis can affect the welfare of the state. In Republic, Socrates notes that states arc but a product of the individuals of which they are composed Therefore, by affecting the harmony of the individual soul, mimesis can then undermine the harmony of the state, and an imperfect political system, such as a timarchy, an oligarchy, a democracy, or a tyranny, can result. However, in Laws, when it is harnessed by the philosophical lawgivers, mimesis can assist in the concord between the rulers and the ruled, thus serving the welfare of the state. Inspiration and mimesis can thus be seen to be related in their effect on the education of both the individual, in the care of the soul, and the state, in its welfare. Plato's criticism of poetry, therefore, which is centred on these two features, addresses common Platonic concerns: in education, politics, ethics, epistemology and psychology.

My paintings emerge from within a context best explained by reference to Nietzsche's perspectivism. That is an intellectual attitude that deprivileges rationalism and accommodates scepticism or unknowing as an acceptable starting point From this standpoint art/language can be seen as being in a state of becoming rather than as representing a state of being. This thesis aims to demonstrate, not only by a philosophical encounter with Giorgio de Chirico's work: ie. his use of myth, his Nietzschean perspectivism and his enigmatic interpretation of figuration, that the most helpful context and understanding of my work can be realied. De Chirico's art, like Nietzsche's philosophy seeks in its processes to explore the possible unity of Dionysian aesthetic force with the Apollonian. Neither Nietzsche nor de Chirico considered within a post-Socratic world that this unity was realizable. Nevertheless they both share in their respective art forms a need to represent the relentless struggle to enact the disjunction of the two aesthetic forces in a secular world. The artist’s enigmatic imagery is characterized by a consideration of appearance and reality and it is for this reason that the work was selected as a model for investigating the nature of enigma. His use of seemingly straightforward, ordinary images suggests a sense of accessibility, yet at the same time they are irreducible to knowing and my own image-making was greatly expanded by investigating these concerns. I am not arguing that de Chirico was influenced by Nietzsche but instead that Nietzsche's philosophical point of view and his use of poetic language to express these views lay in discovering the qualities and substance of the Dionysian spirit As well as working within a Nietzschean world-view set out in The Birth of Tragedy, de Chirico has also drawn on the Italian unification, specifically the Risorgimento and the lineage of these political and mythical figures were endemic to his art and they interface the with his use of the Apollonian-Dionysian disunity first explored by Nietzsche. The focus of the exegesis will be to present the poetic and philosophical use made of the latter in de Chirico’s art It is anticipated that this philosophical encounter with the aesthetic, social and political world of de Chirico will, not only assist in interpreting his life's work anew, but will also provide a context in which my paintings of enigma might be interpreted.

For more than 30 years, the problem of providing a formal framework for modeling dialogues has been a topic of great interest for the scientific areas of Linguistics, Philosophy, Cognitive Science, Formal Languages, Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence. In the beginning the goal was to develop a "conversational computer", an automated system that could engage in a conversation in the same way as humans do. After studies showed the difficulties of achieving this goal Formal Language Theory and Artificial Intelligence have contributed to Dialogue Theory with the study and simulation of machine to machine and human to machine dialogues inspired by Linguistic studies of human interactions. The aim of our thesis is to propose a formal approach for the study of dialogues. Our work is an interdisciplinary one that connects theories and results in Dialogue Theory mainly from Formal Language Theory, but also from another areas like Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics and Multiprogramming. We contribute to Dialogue Theory by introducing a hierarchy of formal frameworks for the definition of protocols for dialogue interaction. Each framework defines a transition system in which dialogue protocols might be uniformly expressed and compared. The frameworks we propose are based on finite state transition systems and Grammar systems from Formal Language Theory and a multi-agent language for the specification of dialogue protocols from Artificial Intelligence. Grammar System Theory is a subfield of Formal Language Theory that studies how several (a finite number) of language defining devices (language processors or grammars) jointly develop a common symbolic environment (a string or a finite set of strings) by the application of language operations (for instance rewriting rules). For the frameworks we propose we study some of their formal properties, we compare their expressiveness, we investigate their practical application in Dialogue Theory and we analyze their connection with theories of human-like conversation from Linguistics. In addition we contribute to Grammar System Theory by proposing a new approach for the verification and derivation of Grammar systems. We analyze possible advantages of interpreting grammars as multiprograms that are susceptible of verification and derivation using the Owicki-Gries logic, a Hoare-based logic from the Multiprogramming field.

The genesis of this research initiative is situated in a very challenging and troubling period in my career as an associate dean in a public post-secondary educational institution - a time during which I led our first significant initiatives into costrecovery program delivery. This mission gave rise to contentious issues about our values as educators and about bureaucratic norms that were being challenged. The issues cried out for discourse and values based decision making about what and how we "ought" to be as an institution. Instead, too often, power differentials and bureaucratic imperatives played the central roles in decision-making processes about this new form of programming. Fundamental questions of goodness and justice were left unresolved and often even un-discussed. The events of my practice form the "object of study" in this research as I seek both an understanding of why the experience was thus and also how it might have been otherwise. Through the work of Jiirgen Habermas I explore the difficult problem of achieving social order, grounded in moral agency, in a world characterized by divergent values and perspectives. I discover hope and potential promise in his conceptually proceduralistic approach to the task of social coordination. Examining my experiences in light of Habermas' notions of social coordination, I find some possible explanations for these events and some concepts that offer hope for new approaches to governance and administration. There remain, however, very real and complicating barriers to the ideal posited by Habermas - barriers located in the complexities of human behaviour and interpersonal relationships. Seeking better ways of understanding those barriers and of responding to their impact, I turn to Hannah Arendt and Susan Bickford whose work provides insight into the personal and interpersonal dimensions of human action in creating just communities. Examining my practice experiences through their conceptualizations yields additional insights about what occurred and why, offers guidance about my own actions, and affords a new appreciation of my own complicity in the events as they transpired. The result is new ways of understanding power, discourse, and moral agency - and therefore of understanding my role in educational leadership.

This thesis is an investigation into the possible genetic background underlying the liability of Standardbred racehorses (Std) to atrial fibrillation (AF). Pedigrees of 204 affected Std admitted to the Ontario Veterinary College Teaching Hospital (OVCTH) for treatment of AF born from 1978 to 2007 and of 1,017 randomly selected racing contemporaries (5 for each Std admitted). Estimates of heritability of AF were obtained using a linear threshold animal model. Marginal genetic contributions of ancestors to affected and control cohorts were determined and differences were tested. The estimate of heritability of AF in the Std was 14% on the observed scale. Eleven ancestors had significantly higher contributions to affected cohorts than to controls. Many of these ancestors appeared multiple times in the five-generation pedigrees of affected horses. Results strongly indicate a genetic predisposition to AF in the Std, with the arrhythmia particularly prevalent in one popular sire line.

This thesis explores some theoretical and empirical issues in the voluntary contributions to public good. Chapter I contains a brief motivation and introduction. In chapters II and III, we analyze two non-cooperative methods for either enhancing or mitigating externality-causing activities. Chapter II deals with positive externality in the public good contribution context, and chapter III with negative externality in the pollution abatement context. Chapter IV contains an empirical analysis of charitable donations by the elderly. Chapter II models the so-called ``corporate challenge gift'' used in real world fund-raising, and adopts the concept to voluntary contributions to public goods more generally. We model the process as a sequential game in public good contributions. One of the agents sets a quantity-contingent matching scheme to leverage higher contributions from the other players. Under the assumption that the preferences of agents are public information and the assumption that the scheme setter can commit to the matching plan, we show that the scheme brings efficient levels of total contributions to the public good. Chapter III applies some ideas from a joint work with Professor Robin Boadway and Professor Jean-Fran\c{c}ois Tremblay on ``Commitment and Matching Contributions to Public Goods'' to the issue of reducing negative externality-causing activity. In particular, it adapts both the Guttman-Danziger-Schnytzer type of rate-matching mechanism and the quantity-contingent matching method for public good contributions to the international pollution abatement problem. In a simple two-country model, we find that both matching schemes induce the countries to internalize the negative externality imposed on the other country. However, perhaps due to the lack of enough policy instruments, they cannot equate the marginal costs of abatement across the countries, leaving room for Pareto improvement. This further improvement can be achieved if the two countries also contribute to a conventional public~good. Chapter IV is an empirical exercise on some positive externality-generating activities by the elderly. It attempts to document the charitable giving of money and time by people aged 60 or above in the 2003 PSID data for the United States and analyze the influences of some economic and demographic factors on these activities. Income, wealth, the subjective rating of health status, and years in school are found to have statistically significant impacts. Income and wealth appear to have distinct influences. The tax price of money donation also has a statistically significant effect on money donations. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2007-11-19 01:48:10.777

Jacques Derrida's lecture entitled "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials", given in Jerusalem in 1986, responds both to those who subsume his project within negative theology and to those that ignore their interrelation. The former fail to see that while negative theology is oriented towards ineffable union with the divine, deconstruction radically denies the possibility of this union. The latter, however, read negative theology solely in the context of this ineffable union, ignoring the possibility of a second apophatic language whose critique of language is itself so radical that it engages in a paradoxcical self-critique that denies, if not union itself, at least the possibility of speaking about union. This second, concurrent language has a distinct family resemblance to Derrida's own deconstructive project, for it embraces the radically negative denials of differance. This study will first present a critique of those who offer either an affirmative or negative answer to the question "Is deconstruction a form of negative theology?", arguing instead that Derrida denies all answers. Its final step will analyze the similarities between negative theology's escape from the silence of pure denial--prayer--and Derrida's own means of escaping the silence summoned when he asks: "How to avoid speaking?"

St. Augustine believed that we are created to aspire to a perfection that aligns our relationships in such a way that we function out of a sense of respect for ourselves and the universe in which we live. In so doing we explore the possibilities of creativity and happiness. His thinking moved from the context of classical Greek thought into a Christian one. By living and recording the dilemma of being unable to act as his intellect mandated, he developed an innovative concept of will. He believed that we are motivated to act through our loves but we have a divided will that can only move towards integration if we love correctly. This necessitates an inward journey. / The thesis of this paper is that if one subscribes to Augustine's beliefs there are serious implications for education. The following authors are cited to develop these implications in a modern philosophical and educational setting: Charles Taylor, Iris Murdoch, Israel Scheffler and Bob Samples. Finally, a brief resume of relevant teaching approaches and materials is offered.