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Research conducted on emotion by psychologists has produced numerous understandings of the concept and there is currently no consensus as to how it should be defined (Russell, 2012). Despite some general agreement among some theorists as to certain aspects, such as physiological response, eliciting events, and related facial expressions, it is a persistent issue and discussions as to how a solution may be found have recurred at various points throughout the history of psychology. Some work has been done to address the problem through the meta-analysis of various definitions and this has proved to be useful in showing the areas where psychologists might agree (e.g. Izard, 2010; Kleinginna & Kleinginna, 1981; Plutchik, 1980). There is an assumption, therefore, that with enough research and debate a solution will be found. However, this assumption neglects to take into account the changing ontological and methodological contexts through which emotion has been defined in psychological science. For this reason the current debates lack a broader contextualisation which could reveal what has influenced the production of particular definitions and the reasons why the problems of definition have come about. This thesis aims to address this gap in the literature by presenting a historical analysis of the understandings of emotion which were produced during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although there has been a great deal of historical work produced which examines psychological theories from this time, there is little, apart from Dixon (2012) which is specifically aimed at contextualising this particular issue. In particular, this thesis will examine one respect in which emotion is often defined; as that of being a subjective experience. This understanding, whilst it most often seems to be the way in which people, if asked, define emotion (Davitz, 1970) has, historically, proved to be contentious in psychological science, perhaps because it is difficult to capture. The thesis describes the method of introspection and its use as a means to examine the subjective experience of emotion during the early years of psychology, and looks at what can be learned about the issue of definition through an understanding of the work conducted during that period. It is shown that introspective analyses often presented a picture of emotions as complex, idiosyncratic and individual experiences and that these characteristics contrasted with the assumptions of the emerging scientific psychology that emotion should be defined as structured, predictable and universal. The search for a concept of emotion which embodied the latter rather than the former characteristics is described, and it is demonstrated that the result was a variety of different conceptualisations. The thesis concludes that it is important not to view the current problem simply as one of academic differences over the veracity of definitions, but to contextualise it in relation to the psychologist’s search for a definition of emotion that assumes the characteristics of a scientific concept.

Magister Artium - MA / This thesis considers introspection and female consciousness in the novels Woman At Point Zero and Two Women In One by Nawal El Saadawi, an Egyptian writer and So Long A Letter and Scarlet Song by Mariama Bâ, a Senegalese writer. This study looks at how narrative technique impacts on questions of self and identity, subjective experience, coherence and transformation. The form of the novel is also highly significant because it shows the connection between form, individualism and consciousness of experience and this is important in understanding these questions of self and identity, subjective experience, coherence and transformation. It allows insight into the internal workings of the individual. The form of the novel is therefore particularly relevant because of the focus on the individual, subject and the consciousness of the individual. Pertinent to the discussion in this thesis is how narrative provides a creative space to enable the reflexive process and also how narrative contributes to the construction and understanding of the self and identity. The dynamic between narratology and novel form, on the one hand, the modes of confession and letter writing, on the other are considered both of which use first person narration.Confession as a genre of personal narrative enables the subject to move inward as part of the self reflection process which allows knowledge of the self. Letter writing a form of personal narrative plays an important role in the exploration of the self and identity.The novel in letter form forces the introspective process through the act of writing and the character reaches a realisation about events and experiences which have shaped her present consciousness. By contrast third person narration in Scarlet Song and Two Women In One foregrounds the social context which shapes the characters‟ sense of self and identity and worldview. The narrative which is rebellious and resistant in form,although quietly so, enables a “revolution” in the character‟s self- and world view.

Many community development programmes are initiated without taking the community members and their needs into consideration. The question arose as to whether, by implementing Paolo Freire's theory concerning the process of conscientisation, sustainable community development could be successfully accomplished in Ivory Park, a developing community in Midrand. The conscientisation process has four components: desocialization, critical thinking, power awareness and self-organization. The participants were guided to become involved in making use of introspection, by means of which they started to find solutions to their problems. The object of this introspection was to impact their decision-making abilities and their sense of self-worth, thus empowering them to reach out to the community in an effort to combine resources in initiating community development programmes. The researcher made use of a participatory research approach during this study, in which concrete and abstract goals were identified. The concrete goals were achieved through the community development process by the participants themselves, whereas the abstract goals were realized through the process of conscientisation. These two processes are closely linked together. The data were collected by means of a tape-recorder during weekly discussions, and then transcribed to enable the researcher to describe the process of community development that took place. Using Miles and Huberman's (1994) data analysis techniques, the transcribed data were analysed according to the four categories from the process of conscientisation, i.e. desocialization, critical thinking, power awareness and self-organization. Interpretations could then be made and a conclusion drawn as to whether, by awakening a critical consciousness, sustainable community development could be initiated. In conclusion: community development programmes can be sustainable only if they have been initiated by the community itself by the implementation of Paolo Freire's process of conscientisation. Key words: process of conscientisation, desocialization, critical thinking, power awareness, self-organization, introspection, Paolo Freire, sustainable community development, participatory research, active participation. / Dissertation (M Cur (Clinical))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Nursing Science / unrestricted

This thesis explores boosting to improve decision-making in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic using a structured introspection. Structured introspection is an intervention where individuals are prompted with and are asked to estimate the importance of a set of attributes relevant to the decision in order to limit the prevalence of potential cognitive biases. To test the intervention, 281 participants divided into an intervention and control group answered an online survey with a dilemma about COVID-19. The dilemma was whether Sweden should shut down the economy or keep it open during the COVID-19 pandemic. The intervention group was asked to rate how important the attributes “saving lives”, “saving the economy”, “concern for the health of the elderly and risk groups”, and “concern for the quality of life and well-being of all citizens” should be for their decision. The control group was only prompted with the question and asked to think carefully. All participants were asked a set of control variables such as risk perception for self and others and emotions when thinking about COVID-19. The results did not show a significant influence on choice on decisions based on the intervention. They did however show a significant correlation with choice on risk perception as well as a correlation between choice on the dependent variable and the attributes in the intervention group.             The conclusion of the thesis is that structured introspection may not be suitable on a contemporary issue affecting participants directly, as they may already have strong opinions about the issue. Further and broader research needs to be conducted to determine in which circumstances this boost can be effective.

Architecture is a field inherently connected to art. The artist cancreate pieces that purposefully challenge our emotional states. Often,the architect is merely responsible for supplying the canvas. Theseemotional challenges, often conveyed by art, can frequently be left assecondary in architecture.In big cities society is constantly changing at a high pace.According to the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (2020), thepopulation stresses more and more, which leads to mental illnessthrough exhaustion. That, in turn, leads to long-term sick-leaves andunemployment. We have little time for self reflection and introspectionand during the remaining hours of our days the media steer us indirections of their own. Our minds are crowded with ideas and needsthat are not inherently ours that further increase toxic societal norms.The relation between our bodies, our minds and our directenvironments has a great impact on our mental well-being. Architectureand spatial design have the ability to inspire and influence humanbehaviour. So, the spaces in which we spend most of our time couldhelp us become mentally stronger and reduce stress levels.In order to explore how to create these kinds of builtenvironments, Virtual Reality (VR) can be used as a tool to test spatialexperiences that would emulate real life situations and trigger realemotional reactions. After surveying the field of VR research andperforming VR experiments, a virtual space was designed. This VRexperience was to act as a summary of the exploratory stage of theproject, acting as a precursor to the architecture set in the real world.The reality-based project is located on site in centralStockholm, in connection to areas where stress levels are recordedto be among the highest. In this building, visitors could pause for ashort time, being surrounded by an architecture that triggers positiveand beneficial emotional responses, ultimately contributing to a moresocially sustainable city.

Peter Carruther's Interpretive Sensory-Access (ISA) theory of self-knowledge is an interesting account of the opaqueness of our own minds that draws upon a wide range of theories from cognitive science and philosophy. In the present paper, I argue that the theory's assumptions support the conclusion that the available perceptual evidence massively underdetermines all of an agent's second-order beliefs about her own beliefs. Such a result is far more negative than the ISA's well-known pessimism regarding self-knowledge. Furthermore, I also argue that, from the same assumptions, it is possible to build an argument to the effect that cognitive scientists trying to determine an agents' true behavior-causing attitude face similar underdetermination problems. Toward the end of the paper, I suggest that the theory's problems arise from a conflation of two different ways in which terms denoting propositional attitudes, such as 'belief', are used in its formulation. Distinguishing between the two usages of these terms, in turn, leads to a further distinction between two different senses in which we can talk about the 'opaqueness' of our own minds. / Master of Arts

À partir d’un corpus constitué de neuf romans mexicains publiés entre 2000 et 2010 par Guillermo Arreola, Mario Bellatin, Patricia Laurent Kullick, Guadalupe Nettel, Cristina Rivera Garza et Jorge Volpi, ce travail explore les spécificités et les convergences de l’écriture fictionnelle à la première personne à l’aube du XXIe siècle. Qu’il s’agisse de récits ouvertement romanesques, prétendument autobiographiques ou autofictionnels, ils s’éloignent tous du modèle canonique de l’autobiographie et transgressent la frontière entre le référentiel et la fiction. Cette thèse cherche à mettre en évidence les caractéristiques les plus significatives de ces écritures qui accordent une large place à l’introspection, que le je narrateur se livre à l’exercice mémoriel de la convocation de souvenirs d’enfance ou qu’il s’interroge sur son identité et sa relation au monde et à l’altérité. Dans quelle mesure ces romans reflètent-ils les questionnements et les inquiétudes contemporaines sur l’écriture du je ? Quels regards, concordants ou divergents, posent-ils sur le sujet lorsque celui-ci est au centre de l’énonciation et de l’univers narratif ?Dans un premier temps, ce travail propose une partie rétrospective qui s’attache à rappeler les écueils et les principales évolutions qu’ont connus les écritures du je depuis l’avènement de l’autobiographie traditionnelle basée sur le modèle rousseauiste. L’époque contemporaine s’emploie à trouver des alternatives à ce modèle canonique, au point d’abandonner bien souvent l’exigence d’authenticité référentielle.La seconde partie s’attache en effet à observer les nombreuses failles de la mémoire des différents narrateurs. Il en résulte une absence de pacte autobiographique au profit de textes qui revendiquent la place capitale de l’invention dans l’écriture de soi. L’opposition entre fiction et authenticité se fissure : l’activité mémorielle passe en partie par une (ré)invention de soi et, ce faisant, n’en est que plus « authentique ».Il apparaît également une récurrence du thème du double en tant qu’alter ego intérieur, lorsque les narrateurs subissent métamorphoses ou dédoublements. Ce devenir autre est parfois synonyme de dissolution menaçante du sujet ou signe, au contraire, d’une revendication de sa nature changeante, évolutive et inconstante, essentiellement schizo.Enfin, ce travail s’intéresse au rôle déterminant de l’altérité à la fois dans le processus de construction identitaire subjective et dans sa mise en récit. Le je se configure à travers les rapports qu’il tisse avec l’autre. Cela vaut tant pour les protagonistes que pour les romans, qui étendent les pratiques introspectives et autoréflexives au texte lui-même, faisant la part belle à la métatextualité et à la transtextualité.À travers l’étude de la thématique introspective, cette thèse s’interroge en somme sur le regard que posent ces représentants de la jeune génération de la littérature mexicaine sur la place du sujet dans un monde désenchanté ou désarticulé, et sur les possibilités de renouveau de l’écriture créative. / Based on a corpus that includes nine Mexican novels, published between 2000 and 2010 by Guillermo Arreola, Mario Bellatin, Patricia Laurent Kullick, Guadalupe Nettel, Cristina Rivera Garza and Jorge Volpi, this work investigates the specificities and convergences of fictional writing in first person at the beginning of the 21st century. Whether the tales happen to be frankly fictional, supposedly autobiographical or autofictional, they all get away from the canonical example of autobiography and they infringe the border between authenticity and fiction. This thesis seeks to evidence the most significant characteristics of these writings which grant much importance to introspection, when the first-person narrator seeks into childhood memories or wonders about the own identity and relationship towards the around world and alterity. How do these novels reflect the contemporary concerns about the writing of the self? Which converging or diverging looks do they take at the self, as it is the main figure of narrative enunciation and universe?This work opens with a retrospective chapter about the main changes and pitfalls that the self-narratives have encountered since the success of traditional autobiography, based on Rousseau’s example. The past decades have been looking for alternatives to this canonical example and many writers often get away from the absolute requirement of authenticity.The second part endeavours to observe the many breaches in the narrators’ memory. In result, the autobiographical pact disappears in favour of texts which claim the prime importance of invention in the self-writing. Opposition between fiction and authenticity seems to be cracking apart: memorial activity includes a process of self-(re)invention which does not make it less “real”, quite the opposite.It is also clear that the topic of the double as an inside alter ego is recurrent, when the narrators go through metamorphosis and split personalities. This becoming other may be a synonym of a threatening dissolution of the self or, on the contrary, a sign of a claim of its changing, inconstant and essentially schizo nature.Finally, this work focuses on the determining role of alterity both in the process of identity and subjective construction, and in the story of it. The self gets to build itself up through the relationships with otherness. This stands both for the characters and for the novels, in which the introspective and auto-reflexive practices extend to the text itself, meaning a solid presence of metatextuality and transtextuality.By studying the introspective topic, this thesis actually wonders about the look these young Mexican writers take at the place of the self in a disillusioned or dislocated world, and at the possibilities of a renewal for the creative writing.

L’expérience consciente pose un problème au physicalisme métaphysique. Il semble en effet difficile de comprendre comment une chose purement physique, telle que le cerveau, peut avoir des expériences conscientes. La stratégie des concepts phénoménaux constitue la voie actuellement la plus suivie par ceux qui désirent répondre à cette difficulté et défendre le physicalisme métaphysique. Elle consiste à rendre compte de nos intuitions anti-physicalistes concernant la conscience dans un cadre purement physicaliste, par une théorie de nos concepts d’expériences conscientes. Ce travail de thèse consiste en une présentation et en une discussion critique de cette stratégie. Ce travail montre que les différentes versions actuelles de cette stratégie échouent toutes à rendre compte de nos intuitions anti-physicalistes, parce qu’elles ne parviennent pas à rendre compte du caractère cognitivement substantiel de notre saisie de la conscience, et parce qu’elles manquent d’expliquer la robustesse conceptuelle de ces intuitions. Ce travail de thèse propose également une nouvelle théorie des concepts phénoménaux qui résout ces difficultés. Cette théorie analyse les concepts phénoménaux comme des concepts dotés d’un contenu cognitif substantiel, en vertu duquel ces concepts caractérisent les expériences conscientes comme des états mentaux situés dans une relation épistémologique particulièrement intime à l’égard du sujet dont ce sont les expériences. Cette théorie permet de dissoudre le problème métaphysique de la conscience d’une manière satisfaisante. / Conscious experience constitutes a problem for physicalism. Indeed, it seems difficult to understand how something purely physical (such as the brain) can have conscious experiences. The phenomenal concept strategy is perhaps the most popular strategy for those who want to address this problem and defend physicalism. This strategy tries to account for our anti-physicalist intuitions regarding consciousness from within a purely physicalist framework, by way of a theory of our concepts of conscious experiences. This dissertation consists firstly in a presentation and a critical discussion of current versions of the phenomenal concept strategy. It tries to show that the various theories belonging to this strategy (broadly construed) all fail to give a satisfying account of anti-physicalist intuitions regarding consciousness; first, because they cannot give an account of our cognitively substantial grasp of consciousness (a grasp which is at the basis of our anti-physicalist intuitions); second, because they cannot explain the conceptual robustness of those intuitions. This dissertation also seeks to put forth a new theory of phenomenal concepts, one able to address those difficulties. This new theory describes phenomenal concepts as concepts that possess substantial cognitive content, in virtue of which they characterize conscious experiences as mental states which stand in a particularly intimate epistemological relation with the subject who has them. I argue that this theory manages to solve the various difficulties encountered by other theories of phenomenal concepts, thus allowing us to dissolve the metaphysical problem of consciousness in a satisfying way.

Depuis une trentaine d'années la recherche et la littérature scientifique en éducation ont mis en évidence l'importance de l'analyse des pratiques dans la formation des enseignants et des formateurs. La question des gestes professionnels est aujourd'hui une des problématiques de la formation des enseignants. En prenant appui sur des approches théoriques variées et complémentaires, comme l'anthropologie, la sémiotique et l'ergonomie cognitive notre recherche et notre objet d'étude se concentrent sur l'identification de « microgestes professionnels » qui sont « en (je) eux » dans la mise en pratique et la dynamique de gestes professionnels. Elle tente de mesurer et d'évaluer l'importance d'une prise de conscience réflexive incarnée - l'introspection gestuée - de ces micro gestes dans l'appropriation et/ou la mise en oeuvre des gestes professionnels par des novices et des experts dans des disciplines et des ordres d'enseignement (1er- 2e degré) différents. Une bonne part des difficultés rencontrées par les enseignants résident dans la nonmaîtrise de certains « micro-gestes d'action » vécus dans leur communication didactique et pédagogique. A partir de deux gestes professionnels celui de (S') observer et celui de « (Se) mettre en scène » (Alin, 2010), nous avons mis en évidence cinq micro-gestes qui interagissent constamment entre les protagonistes de la scène du cours. Ce sont : la posture gestuée, la voix, le regard, l'usage du mot, et le positionnement tactique (le placement/déplacement). Sur le plan méthodologique notre protocole de recueil de données s'appuie sur la captation vidéo de situations professionnelles suivie d'entretiens d'auto confrontation. Cette approche qualitative relève à la fois de l'analyse du travail et de l'analyse du discours (langage verbal et non verbal). Les traces enregistrées sont exploitées et analysées avec comme cadre théorique principal, l'approche sémiotique de Ch. S. Peirce. C'est notre expérience de direction de chef de choeur et de chef d'orchestre qui nous a interrogé sur le sens des actes posés, dans ce qu'ils ont de plus infime et signifiant. L'enseignant comme concepteur crée et innove mais il est aussi un interprète. Comme le musicien, il doit savoir interpréter la partition qu'il a créée ou bien qu'il a empruntée, grâce à l'usage de micro-gestes précis, incarnés dans des actions gestuées et situées. La prise de conscience et la prise en compte des gestes professionnels et des micro-gestes qui en constituent la dynamique nous apparaît comme pouvant être un des appuis forts de la formation initiale et continue dans la construction de l'expertise pédagogique des enseignants et/ou des formateurs / For the last thirty years research and scientific literature on education have focused the importance of analysing best practises in teacher training, from the point of view of both teachers and trainers. Today the subject of professional gestures has become one of the most important issues in effective teacher training. This study used data from varied theoretical and complementary approaches such as anthropology, semiotics, cognitive ergonomics and our research aims at identifying vibrant “professional micro gestures” which are to be put into practise. It tries to measure and assess the importance of the awareness of these micro gestures referred to as -introspection on gestures- in the appropriation and the implementation of professional gestures by both novice teachers and experts in different subjects and teaching primary and secondary levels. Most of the difficulties that teachers have to deal with are due to the fact that they don’t control certain “action micro gestures” experienced in their communication both didactic and educational. From two professional gestures: ‘Observing’ and ‘Acting’, we have highlighted 5 micro-gestures constantly interacting with the protagonists of the classroom. They are posture, voice, eye contact, speech and use of space and moving. The method that we used to collect data for our research is based on recordings of professional situations followed by self assessment interviews and feedback. This qualitative approach deals with the analysis of both the work and the speech (verbal and non verbal