Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / How far can landscape photographic images allow us to interrogate the extent to which collective socio-political, cultural and economic aspirations of marginalised South Africans have, or have not, been achieved since the dawn of democracy in 1994? In thinking about such aspirations, I posit that the victims of colonialism and the Apartheid system had expectations of living in a free, non-racial South Africa where equality would be realised in political, social, cultural and economic spheres. However, I use landscape as the basis for determining the extent to which such aspirations might or might not have been achieved within the context of post-Apartheid South Africa. What role can the work of David Goldblatt (born 1930) and Santu Mofokeng (born 1956) play in facilitating our ability to read a post-Apartheid diagnosis regarding this question? These issues are the primary focus of this thesis, and connect to a range of other questions. For instance, what methodological approaches do these practitioners employ in framing their photographed landscape scenes, be they populated or depopulated? Why is landscape in the centre of this thesis, and why are these practitioners considered relevant in the context of this study irrespective of their disparate racial and cultural backgrounds? The main body of the thesis traces these photographers’ individual methodological approaches, distinguishing them from predominant modes associated with the Afrapix Collective (1982-1992) and the later Bang-Bang Club (1990-1994). It locates them within the context of ‘struggle photography’ with which the Afrapix members and the Bang-Bang Club were primarily concerned. The Bang-Bang Club in particular had a preoccupation with the framing of violent scenes that ensued in the South African political arena during the early 1990s, leading up to the national democratic elections in 1994. My argument centres on what I consider the main element that distinguishes the practitioners in question from the Afrapix and the Bang-Bang Club – the everyday. I explore how specific examples of Goldblatt’s and Mofokeng’s focus on the everyday contribute to an articulation of the role of landscape as a medium of social critique. Instead of framing sensationalist and newsworthy episodes of violent political strife within pre-1994 South Africa, Goldblatt’s long career traces the underlying causes of the social injustices and resultant power contestations while Mofokeng, who was also a member of Afrapix, looks at what I term the spiritual or ethereal elements within landscape. It is this subtlety in their approach that sets them apart from their counterparts as they use landscape as a kind of proverbial text in which we can ‘read’ human actions over time. Thus time and space are inevitably significant in the study of these photographers’ oeuvre. But what do all these elements have to do with the challenging question of land in South Africa? What do they have to do with the construction of the South African landscape? What is the role of the camera in that construction? Using photographic images as important tools, I place the land issue, especially as it is mediated through landscape construction, at the centre of my interrogation of power relations in Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa.

David Baker is a prominent American composer, noted for his fusion of jazz elements with western art music. The focus of this study is on his composition for cello and percussion, Singers of Songs-Weavers of Dreams, where this fusion is particularly evident. Baker's writing for the cello is most innovative and of considerable historical significance. Firstly, he introduced the cello to the realm of jazz, and secondly, revolutionized fingering patterns in order to accomodate jazz modal sequences and improvisational patterns. This composition is truly a milestone in the cello literature, unprecedented in style and technical innovation, and deserving of more attention.

The thesis argues that two ways in which we can consider empathy’s role in ethics are fundamentally flawed because they fail to take into account the myriad ways in which empathy can be affected and influenced by our motivations. I apply what I call ‘the motivation objection’ to these two views. This has three aspects: (1) reliability: because empathy can be affected and influenced by our motivations, empathizing does not always lead to the right results; (2) function: because it can be affected and influenced by our motivations, empathy is not sufficient for various functions; (3) circularity: because it can be affected and influenced by our motivations, empathy cannot be used to define or explain certain aspects of morality in a non-circular way. The two ways of considering empathy’s role in ethics are what I call constitutive views, according to which empathy in some way constitutes, or is the foundation for, morality, and instrumental views, according to which empathy is of instrumental value in morality. I apply the motivation objection to three constitutive views, two historical and one contemporary, each of which is a sentimentalist theory of morality with empathy (or sympathy, in the case of the historical theories) at its heart. These are the sentimentalist moral theories of David Hume, Adam Smith and Michael Slote. I then apply the motivation objection to instrumental views of empathy’s role in ethics, before defending one particular instrumental view, according to which empathy can play a positive role in morality when integrated with virtue, and the virtue of compassion in particular.

Canadian remembrance of the Great War (1914-1918) in the early twenty-first century is often associated with grand gestures at national monuments like the opening of the new Canadian War Museum in 2005 and the restoration of the Vimy Ridge Memorial in 2007. However, these sites of memory, what Pierre Nora terms lieux de mémoire, are not part of the everyday environments of memory, the milieux de mémoire, of most Canadians. In my investigation of three contemporary works of Canadian literature: The Danger Tree by David Macfarlane, Broken Ground by Jack Hodgins, and Unity (1918) by Kevin Kerr, locally-based storytellers describe the continued influence of the Great War on their individual Canadian communities. The fictionalized narrating personas in these three works create what I refer to as bio-geographies: first-person accounts of the narrator’s particular social and memory environments. While the bio-geographers in these three texts lack first-hand experience of the Great War, their writing reflects the continued repercussions of the conflict in the weeks, years, and decades after the 1918 armistice. The Great War differentially affected thousands of communities in Canada and Newfoundland. Constructing a coherent national narrative that accounts for the multiple lived experiences of individuals in communities across North America is virtually impossible. Turning to local representations of the Great War (in the case of the three bio-geographic texts: depictions of communities in Newfoundland, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan) provides a sense of the nation as a diverse landscape of memory with multiple vantage points. Negotiating the complex terrain of self, place, and memory, the bio-geographers in the three works I examine create representations of the past that reveal how sites of memory, lieux de mémoire, come to be firmly embedded in the ongoing lived experiences of comunity members, the milieux de mémoire. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

In his paper, The Paradoxes of Time Travel, David Lewis posits a defense for the possibility of time travel by arguing that the grandfather 'paradox' is not, in fact, paradoxical at all. Two alternative solutions to the grandfather paradox are discussed in this paper. The first is a result of Paul Horwich’s reply to Lewis and aims to pit the Lewisian conception of compatibility against Horwich’s improbability defense. Proposed by Nicholas Smith and C.G. Goddu, this theory explains that any attempt at backward time travel will lead to the creation of long strings of improbable coincidences. An alternative thesis of the multiverse is also discussed, wherein it was proposed that instead of traveling into his past, the time traveler enters an alternate, yet completely identical universe. The multiverse thesis did not stand up to any philosophical critique, and it was posited that the thesis changes the nature of the question entirely. It is evident that Lewis’ discussion of the grandfather paradox raises several fundamentally interesting philosophical questions regarding the logical and causal irregularities of changing the past. This paper aims to adress some of these questions through a metaphysical analysis of Lewis' view, backwards causality, and the nature of time itself.

My aim in this thesis is to demonstrate that common interpretations of Kant’s theory of respect do not account for the motivation a subject feels to follow the moral law. A large number of interpreters focus on Kant’s early ethical works—such as the Grounding and the Critique of Practical Reason—to justify how the moral law alone motivates a subject to act rightly. However, by the time he published Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant had discovered the problem of radical evil—the fact that people tend to feel more motivated by the inclinations than by the moral law. Kant’s solution to this challenge comes in the form of moral education: the contingent practices of historical institutions (factors that are extraneous to the moral law) are required to learn respect for the law. By the end of the Religion, it will be asked whether duty for duty’s sake is ever achieved.

The thesis focuses on analysing brand value of the selected company using the model of customer-based brand equity. Theoretical part focuses on explaining the terms and methods of measuring brand value. The subsequent pratical part is dedicated to analysis of individual determinants and their impact on the overall brand value.

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Magister Artium - MA / According to our ordinary conception of voluntary action, our actions are the causal result of conscious intentions. To take a very basic example: I wish to take a sip of coffee, and I therefore reach out and take hold of the mug. However, studies performed by Libet challenge this ordinary conception. What Libet found in his experiments was that the brain initiates voluntary actions and the person becomes consciously aware of an intention to act only some 400 msec after the brain’s initiation; for instance, my brain has already initiated the process of causing my arm to reach out and take hold of the mug some 400 msec before I am aware that I wish to take a sip of coffee. That is, conscious intention doesn’t appear to precede voluntary action at all – it actually follows it (or follows its initiation, at least), and thus Libet’s studies present a serious challenge to our ordinary conception of voluntary action. This project will investigate whether a particular theory of mind – namely, Armstrong’s Central State Materialism – can cope with the challenge posed by Libet’s studies and salvage our ordinary conception of voluntary action. Armstrong’s theory appears promising in this regard because his account of consciousness and introspection as higher-order states seems to allow room that we will become aware of our willings only after those willings are already initiated.

This documentary film follows the group NoiseFold as they rehearse and perform their unique style of interactive video art before an enthusiastic audience. Originally hailing from the vibrant art community in Santa Fe, New Mexico, founders David Stout and Cory Metcalf return home to prepare for a special performance along with the addition of collaborator and cellist, Frances-Marie Uitti. Shot in black and white, the film aesthetically borrows from early cinema and incorporates a blend of cinéma-vérité and direct cinema styles for the purposes of creating a film that is both visually and sonically rich.