This project is primarily exegetical in nature and aims to provide a rational reconstruction of the concept of moral responsibility in the work of Immanuel Kant, specifically in his Critique of Pure Reason (CPR), Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (GR), and Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR). It consists of three chapters – the first chapter interprets the concept of freedom that follows from the resolution to the Third Antinomy in the CPR. It argues that Kant is best understood here to be providing an unusual but cogent, compatibilist account of freedom that the author terms meta-compatibilism. The second chapter examines the GR and CPrR to interpret the theory of practical reason and moral agency that Kant develops in these works. This chapter concludes by evaluating what has been established about Kant’s ideas of freedom and moral agency at that point in the project, identifying some problems and objections in addition to providing some suggestions for how Kantian ethics might be adapted within a consequentialist framework. The third chapter argues that, for Kant, there are two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions (in addition to a compatibilist definition of freedom) that must obtain for an individual to qualify as responsible for her actions.

The modern principle of freedom of subjectivity sets a moral standard which radically departs from Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean: modern moral agents, exemplified by the rising middle class, are granted the right to develop extreme dispositions towards goods like honour and wealth. Given that Aristotle considers such goods divisible in the sense that when one person gets more another gets less―the basic definition of distributive injustice―it isn’t surprising that modern philosophers like Kant have trouble reconciling this right with duty to others. Failing to resolve this dilemma satisfactorily in ethical terms, Kant and others turn to aesthetics, but Kant, at least, takes no account there of moral agents’ interest in the actual existence of goods. In this respect, the alternative to the Kantian aesthetic response I document in my dissertation is more Stoic than modern. This response, the modern mediocre-artist narrative, features a mediocre artist who fails to achieve the new standard of distributive justice and a genius who ostensibly succeeds. Though other critics discuss the ethical dimension of mediocre-artist narratives, they don’t consider the possibility that the mediocre artist’s failure might be due to the ethical dilemma just described. They therefore tend to uphold uncritically the narratives’ negative judgments of mediocrity, ascribing the latter’s failure to egotism. By contrast, I examine the genius’ artistic efforts for evidence of a similar failure. Ultimately, I demonstrate that the genius does indeed fail, albeit less spectacularly, arguing on this basis that egotistical characterizations of mediocrity are unjust. But the mediocre aren’t the only victims: in “concealing” genius’ failure, mediocre-artist narratives ignore unmet claims on its fruits. Finally, I invoke Derrida’s notion of the “lesser violence” to outline a new genre that recognizes the unattainability of the modern standard of justice. I call this genre morally progressive, rejecting Jürgen Habermas’ view that freedom of subjectivity has hit a dead end, and that we must backtrack to a philosophical turning indicated but not taken by Hegel, namely, the path of intersubjective freedom.

This report is showing the process and result from a project collaboration between Norrlands University hospital and  design student Simon Fredriksson.  Respiratory treatment is carried out on patients that for some reason fail to breathe sufficiently to assimilate enough oxygen to survive. The reason for why a person needs respiratory treatment can be many and the length of the treatment varies a lot. It can stretch from a couple of hours during surgery to years in treatment for example Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or Immature lungs.  The project focus have been to look at how to increase the freedom of movement for kids receiving respiratory treatment. Respiratory treatment are complex and involves advanced equipment. It´s demanding both physically and mentally both for patient and involved family and can in some cases carry on for several years.    A young child with impaired breathing should still have the freedom of movement and not have to be restricted to the length of a respirator hose and depend on others to be able to move around. Learning how to crawl walk and freely move around should be every childs right. The quote are from  the National heart, lung and blood institute in America. My aim is to create a concept that will offer that movement and prove them wrong. This project is carried out in collaboration with the Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Norrlands University hospital in Umeå.

En aquesta Tesi es proposa una nova estructura de control amb l'objectiu de solucionar el conflicte entre rendiment i robustesa en l'esquema de realimentació tradicional. La teoria matemàtica de la factorització coprimera permet proposar un configuració de control basada en observador. És el que es denomina configuració Observador-Controlador i es fa servir de diferents maneres. La primera proposta enfoca la millorar les prestacions de robustesa com a una alternativa al disseny d'un controlador robust. Amb la intenció d'aconseguir un bon rendiment en presència de pertorbacions i d'incerteses procedim de la següent manera: en primer lloc, dissenyem un sistema de control per realimentació estàndard per tal de satisfer els requeriments de seguiment a referència; en segon lloc, millorem les propietats de robustesa sense alterar les propietats de seguiment del sistema de control inicial. Aquesta estratègia es basa en la generació d'un complement pel sistema de control nominal mitjançant una estructura fonamentada en la configuració Observador-Controlador. Els sistema de control resultant funciona de tal manera que la planta estarà controlada només pel controlador per realimentació nominal quan no hi hagi ni incerteses ni pertorbacions externes i el controlador per a la robustificació estarà actiu només en presencia de incerteses i/o pertorbacions externes.La segona proposta afronta l'objectiu d'aconseguir un bon rendiment en presència de pertorbacions i d'incerteses. En aquest cas, desenvolupen un controlador de dos graus de llibertat (2-DOF) i procedim de la següent manera: primer, dissenyem un sistema de control per realimentació basat en observador per tal de garantir un nivell mínim d'estabilitat robusta; segon, dissenyem un prefiltre per tal de garantir robustesa en les propietats de llaç obert. Malgrat les dues propostes no es basen en una reformulació en termes del factor de Youla, es possible fer una parametrització basada en Youla per tal de caracteritzar el conjunt de tots els observadors per una planta nominal. En essència, les dues propostes es poden veure com a estructures de dos graus de llibertat. Tot i que l'esquema de la primera proposta no s'adapta a una estructura de 2-DOF clàssica, amb un prefiltre i una part per realimentació, podem considerar-la com a tal pel fet que aconsegueix una complerta separació de propietats. En aquest cas, el controlador inicial s'ocupa de les especificacions de seguiment a referència per a la planta nominal i el controlador per a la robustificació s'encarrega de la millora, si cal, les prestacions de robustesa nominals. / In this Thesis, we shall propose a new controller architecture to try to completely overcome the conflict between performance and robustness in the traditional feedback framework. The proposed control configuration comes from the coprime factorization approach and, in such a context, a somewhat uncommon observer-based control configuration is derived. It is the Observer-Controller configuration and it is used in different arrangements.The first proposal deals with the robustness enhancement problem as an alternative to the design of a robust control system. With the lofty goal of achieving high performance in the face of disturbances and uncertainties we proceed as follows: first, an initial feedback control system is set for the nominal plant to satisfy tracking requirements and second, the resulting robustness properties are conveniently enhanced while leaving unaltered the tracking responses provided by the initial controller. The approach is based on the generation of a complement for the nominal control system by means of an structure based on the Observer-Controller configuration. The final control system works in such a way that the plant will be solely controlled by the initial nominal feedback controller when there is neither model uncertainties nor external disturbances and the robustification controller will only be active when there is model uncertainties and/or external disturbances. The second proposal also addresses the goal of high performance in the face of disturbances and uncertainties. In this case, a two degrees-of-freedom (2-DOF) control configuration is developed. We proceed as follows: first, an observer-based feedback control scheme is designed to guarantee some levels of stability robustness and second, a prefilter controller is computed to guarantee robust open-loop processing of the reference commands. Despite both proposals are not based on a reformulation in terms of the Youla parameter, it is possible to perform a Youla parametrization to characterize the set of all observers for the nominal plant. Essentially, both proposals can be considered as 2-DOF control configurations. The first presented proposal do not fit the standard 2-DOF control scheme made up with a feedback controller and a prefilter controller. Nevertheless, it can also be seen to lie in the 2-DOF control configuration in the sense that a complete separation of properties is achieved. In such case, the tracking properties of the nominal plant are attained by a controller and the robustness properties are considered and enhanced if necessary by the Observer-Controller configuration.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization’s Freedom From Hunger Campaign was a world wide campaign to raise awareness of the problem of hunger and malnutrition and possible solutions to that problem. The Campaign was launched in 1960, and brought UN Agencies, governments, NGOs, private industry, and a variety of groups and individuals together in cooperation and common cause. FAO Director- General B.R. Sen used FFHC to modernize the work of international development and to help transform FAO from a technical organization into a development agency. FFHC pioneered the kinds of relationships among governments, governmental organizations, NGOs, and other organizations and agencies taken for granted today. Canada was one of more than 100 countries to form a national FFH committee, and support for the Campaign in Canada was strong. Conditions in Canada in the 1960s favoured the kind of Campaign Sen envisioned, and the ideas underpinning FFHC resonated with an emerging Canadian nationalism in that period. The impact of FFHC can be identified in the development efforts of government, Canadian NGOs, private industries, and a variety of organizations. Significantly, the reorganization of Canada’s aid program and institutions reflected closely developments at FAO and FFHC. Participation in FFHC had important, lasting effects in Canada, and Canada made one of the strongest contributions to the Campaign.

Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems are viewed as the last available supply for the ever-growing demand on higher data rates in modern wireless communication systems. Smart exploitation of the traditional wireless resources (time-slots or bandwidth under the same transmit power level) has reached its saturation point. By making better use of the free space between the radio links, based on the multipath radio wave propagation, MIMO systems have shown significant capacity improvement with the same traditional wireless resources. In this multi-disciplinary research, we are exploring the link between the electromagnetic propagation and the information theory. Unlike the majority of recent research work, we model the propagation channel matrix between the transmit/receive elements in a deterministic manner under the Maxwellian framework. Having included the environment properties and the characteristics of the radiating elements, the deterministic approach provides a realistic assessment of the MIMO system performance in specific scenarios. The problem addressed in this research is the evaluation of the multi-antenna systems degrees of freedom (DOF) by employing all the available electromagnetic diversity resources (spatial, pattern and polarization). Based on a developed well-defined power independent dimensionality (PID) metric, we start by investigating the information-bearing potential of the collocated multi-polarization MIMO system. We study the hexapole system (exploiting both electric and magnetic fields in conveying independent information) and compare it to the tripole systems (exploiting the vectorial polarization diversity of one field only). We present numerical results for 3 deterministic scenarios: a canonical free-space (near and far field exact solution), a canonical perfect electric conductor (PEC) corridor using rigorous modal analysis, and a lossy-wall corridor using image ray tracing (IRT). Next, we provide deterministic results for the more interesting sampling problem of the electromagnetic vector fields: given a specific MIMO array size, what is the optimum number of packed multi-polarization antennas (i.e. multi-polarization 1D, 2D or 3D sampling) that yields the largest PID for a given environment and what is the estimate of this PID? Using a canonical case of multi-polarized arrays inside a multipath-rich PEC corridor, we show that the spatial frequency spectrum of the electromagnetic field governs the optimum PID of the site-specific scenario. The problem is analogous to the DOF determination of an essentially time-limited-band-limited 1D scalar function using the framework of the prolate spheroidal wave functions. We also present simulation results for the same sampling problem in a lossy-wall indoor environment using IRT.

In this thesis I will explore the relationship between Nozick’s self-ownership principle and freedom. I will defend G.A. Cohen’s critique of self-ownership and try to show how his argument that self-ownership is hostile to genuine freedom presents a problem for Nozick. I think it is clear that Nozick’s self-ownership does little to protect a meaningful sort of freedom; and a meaningful sort of freedom is exactly what Nozick aims to protect. This is true because eudaimonistic moral beliefs ought to undergird Nozick’s self-ownership thesis, and self-ownership can therefore be assessed in light of whether it actually promotes human flourishing in the relevant ways. This undergirding eudaimonism becomes clear when we see that self-ownership is intended to protect the ability of each individual to pursue and act upon her own conception of the good.

I analyze the potentially self-destructive tension inherent in liberalism between conceptions of negative liberty and positive liberty. In doing so, I utilize Aristotle’s theory of virtue to show that virtue is the best method of resolving this tension. In addition, I demonstrate that liberal virtues are best construed as virtues of intellect to be exercised in the public sphere. In particular, I show the importance of not construing liberal virtues as virtues of character (often referred to as moral virtues), because advocating such virtues is, in fact, contrary to the central tenets of liberalism. That is, I argue that it is illiberal to ask liberal citizens to develop a certain moral character, and that it is, instead, essential for said citizens to develop intellectual virtues as a method of resolving this tension within liberalism between the virtues needed to sustain liberalism and liberalism’s resistance towards promoting those virtues.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states that all people are entitled to freedom and equality. Providing freedom is an important part of democracy and development yet the process is not always simple and it faces many obstacles. Freedom is identified in many forms but one of the most contentious forms is freedom of religion and conscience; it is currently the subject of heated debate as some prioritise it above all other freedoms whilst others argue that religion is too often the cause of conflict and should not exist at all. Providing freedom of religion means defending a person’s right to practise their religious beliefs, though some can hinder the freedom of others. One of the obstacles facing the provision of various freedoms might be the defence of religious freedom. In order to make more people more free, it may be necessary to limit religious freedom to a certain extent. By employing an abductive approach, this qualitative desk study infers from the observation of occurrences where religious freedom has detrimentally affected or been affected by another form of freedom that an inverse relationship might exist and furthermore that conflict could result. The cases, each one an incident taking place in a highly developed and democratic country, were collected from online newspapers, primarily the BBC, and were analysed using Mill’s Harm Principle as a framework. It was found that, rather than threatening other forms of freedom, defending the religious freedom of one group is more likely to threaten the religious freedom of another group. Small-scale, recurring conflict is a common occurrence, most often resolved judicially and in favour of the majority. It was concluded that freedom in all its forms is not possible for all people simultaneously and that limiting freedom to avoid harming others it also likely to cause harm.

Head tracking is an important way to interact with virtual objects in virtual world. The viewercan move or rotate his head to observe the 3D scene in dierent view. Normally head tracking isused in a cave or just on a at screen.Dome theater has a half sphere screen with multiple projectors together for showing the wholescene onto the big screen. The dome screen could give the viewer a very strong immersion feelingwhen head tracking inside dome theater and that is why we want to implement head tracking indome theater. The half sphere dome screen is so big that multiple projectors should be used forshooting the whole scene onto the big screen. Hence a cluster system is used for manipulating allthe projectors working smoothly. The display system of dome theater has no place for the headtracking part.This thesis tries to introduce a method to do head tracking in dome theater. The mainproblem is how to add head tracking in the display system in dome theater. Frame buer object(FBO) is used as the solution for this problem. The viewer's viewing frustum is created in framebuer object in order to render the 3D scene depending on the viewer's head position. The FBOtexture will then be attached onto a 3D sphere which simulates the dome sphere in virtual world.Since the viewing frustum is always created depending on the viewer's head position, the FBOtextures on the 3D sphere always can represent the 3D scene rendered depending on the viewer'shead position. Using the projectors to shoot the 3D scenes which is the 3D sphere attached by theFBO textures onto the dome screen. That is the main part of how to implement head tracking indome theater.This thesis forcus on rendering the 3D scene onto the dome screen depending on the viewer'shead position. The tracking device controlling part is out of this thesis's scope. VR Juggler (VRJ) is used as the framework in this project. Viewer's position setting and cluster setting are allsetted in the conguration file.