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Being a scholar of International Politics, David Mitrany has both the fortune and misfortune. It is his fortune that we can not ignore his thought when talking about the early construction of European Union. It is his misfortune that his functionalism is simplified to be a theory of economic integration by some scholars without probing into his core of thought. The purposes of this article are to make a complete discussion of David Mitrany and his functionalism and to review some critics with bias made by some scholars. Besides, we can know functionalism deeper by reviewing Mitrany¡¦s attitude toward the two Great Debates in theory of International Relations.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1981. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-211). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

This report presents a critique of the ideology that language is naturally "perfect" on some level of analysis, or, alternately, that it can be made to be perfect through processes of decontextualization or through the construction of a new language. I identify this ideology of linguistic idealization as one of the defining characteristics of formalist, Chomskyan linguistics. This report describes three features of this ideology and their impact on formalist linguistics: science envy, the elegance fallacy, and the teleological fallacy. In order to understand the idealizing trend in its social and intellectual context, I present historical background on the various versions of this ideology that theorists have adopted during certain periods in Western scholarship about language. This report ultimately argues that the dynamic paradigm, which currently holds a minority status in American linguistics, as well as the simple but profound recognition that language has evolved along with its users, can provide an instructive contrast to the idealizing trend in mainstream linguistics. An acceptance of the ways in which language is subject to dynamic functional pressures, rather than or in addition to static, asocial rules, can expand the field beyond its currently narrow and limited purview to accommodate more of what we know about the reality of language structure and use. The report will end with the claim that even if we accept as unavoidable some measure of idealization within linguistic research, we should do so only with good reason, not simply because it is standard practice. In addition, researchers should make such a decision with an awareness of the historical underpinnings and ideological consequences of idealizing the object of their inquiry. / text

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The main claim of this dissertation is that Hume’s theory of the self can be interpreted in terms of a causal or functional theory of mind. It is a thesis about Hume’s identification of mental particulars―impressions and ideas―in terms of the kind of roles that each plays in the cognitive system that it is a member of. The true Humean idea of the human mind is to understand it as a system of different mental states and processes, which are linked together by the relation of cause and effect. Functionalism as such can be construed as both teleo-functionalism and psycho-functionalism. The former is rooted in his teleological characterization of the mind according to which the bundle of perceptions persists over time by maintaining functional continuity, whereas the main source of Hume’s psycho-functionalism lies in his Representational Theory of Mind. Hume, however, Hume expresses his strong dissatisfaction with his earlier treatment of the topic, and confesses that he now finds an inconsistency in his original account. He does not make clear in his recantation what he finds problematic in his earlier account. And although more than a dozen interpretations have been suggested, no consensus as to what Hume’s worry is has emerged. I claim that Hume’s functionalism, as presented in the main body of the Treatise, stores a problem for him and when he arrives at the Appendix he realises the problem and confesses that he is unable to resolve it. The problem that leads to the inconsistency has two main possible sources: First, the principles of constancy and coherence may successfully account for the arising belief in the idea of the continued and distinct existence of external objects and the idea of personal identity, but they fail to explain our belief in other minds (selves). Second, Hume’s functionalism is circular because it presupposes personal identity. The central idea is that if Hume is right to say that something like functional continuity would suffice for persons to persist through time, then he must show that we can have a complete account of how one’s mental states produce the idea of a persisting self without making assumption about the identity condition of their subject or bearer. And of course, psycho-functionalism, including Hume’s, identifies a mental state in terms of its functional relations to other mental states that are the states of the same person. This is straightforwardly circular.

Thesis (M. Augmentative and Alternative Communication)--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.