Na Introdução, discute-se o estatuto da linguagem em Espinosa e a maneira pela qual se interpreta a obra. A primeira parte, dedicada à ontologia, contém quatro capítulos: a crítica de Espinosa aos filósofos (capítulo 1), a refutação do finalismo (capítulo 2), a teoria da causalidade (capítulo 3), a centralidade da noção de ordem (capítulo 4). O Apêndice da primeira parte versa sobre o conceito de regra de vida. A segunda parte é dedicada à concepção de história em Espinosa e compreende três capítulos: o conceito de multitudo (capítulo 1), o trabalho na gênese da vida comum (capítulo 2); a revolta popular (capítulo 3). No Apêndice da segunda parte discute-se a noção de democracia. Na conclusão procura-se mostrar de que maneira o conceito de história em Espinosa está ligado ao problema da igualdade/desigualdade. / In the Introduction, it is argued the status of language in Spinoza and the way in which it is interpretad the work. The first part, dedicated to ontology, contains four chapters: Spinozas critical analysis of the philosophers (chapter 1), the refutation of finalism (chapter 2), the theory of causality (chapter 3) and the centrality of the notion of order (chapter 4). The Appendix of the first part is about the concept of rule of life. The second part is dedicated to Spinozas conception of history, and comprises three chapters: the concept of multitudo (chapter 1), the work on the genesis of life in common (chapter 2) and the popular revolt (chapter 3). In the Appendix of the second parte it is discuted the notion of democracy. In the Conclusion it is attempted to show the way the concept of history in Spinoza is linked with the problem of equality/unequality.

The central premise of this enquiry is that the International Baccalaureate (IB) model of education fails to deliver the humanitarian values that its literature claims describe. Its curriculum lacks the moral authority of a coherent philosophical foundation, and this promotes 'emotivism,' which reinforces contradictory ‘neoliberal’ values. Accordingly, this undermines the basic aim of an IB education and leaves its teachers prone to the subjectivism of emotivist morality. The proposal is that a process of reflexive practice can create an Aristotelian alternative to emotivism that revitalises the IB’s values-based model. Furthermore, it will argue that technology can build this practice into a 'social ontology’ that challenges the ‘governmentality’ of contemporary international education. To test the premise, an isolated ‘classic’ type of international IB school is considered because it reveals how a teacher’s cultural displacement shows the ontological significance of difference. This is followed by an evaluation of the ontological impact of international education’s governmentality. Subsequently, Alasdair MacIntyre's virtue theory is combined with Michel Foucault's ‘care of the self,’ to build a framework for reflective teacher practice. Then, an argument is made to use technology to connect these individuals and form a reflexive social ontology. To conclude, the enquiry argues that technology represents an objective rationality that challenges emotivism by removing subjectivism from the moral issues of difference facing an IB teacher.

Pretendemos realizar um exame crítico do debate do filósofo Merleau-Ponty com as teorias psicanalíticas contemporâneas a ele, mostrando como tal foi determinante no desenvolvimento de seu pensamento. Não se trata de mostrar que há somente uma convergência entre a sua interpretação da psicanálise com a fenomenologia, mas uma verdadeira necessidade de diálogo. Longe de afirmar que este tenha sido o único debate importante de Merleau-Ponty com as não-filosofias ou que ele foi homogêneo em sua obra, pretendemos mostrar como alguns conceitos clínicos foram incorporados em seu trabalho se confundindo com os próprios conceitos-chave que o filósofo cunhou para cumprir seu projeto filosófico. / Our objective is to perform a critical analysis of the debate between the philosopher Merleau-Ponty and the psychoanalytical theories contemporaries with him, demonstrating how this debate was determining in the development of his thought. We do not aim at demonstrating that his interpretation of psychoanalysis simply meets the phenomenology, but that it configures itself as a real need for dialog. Far from stating that this was Merleau-Pontys only important dialog with the non-philosophies or that his work is homogeneous, we aim at demonstrating how some clinical concepts were embodied in his work, fading among the key concepts created to accomplish his philosophical project.

Au Yeung Ching Man. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-110). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iv / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- The Semantic Web and Ontologies --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2 --- Motivations --- p.5 / Chapter 1.2.1 --- Fuzziness of Concepts --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.2 --- Typicality of Objects --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.3 --- Context and Its Effect on Reasoning --- p.8 / Chapter 1.3 --- Objectives --- p.9 / Chapter 1.4 --- Contributions --- p.10 / Chapter 1.5 --- Structure of the Thesis --- p.11 / Chapter 2 --- Background Study --- p.13 / Chapter 2.1 --- The Semantic Web --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2 --- Ontologies --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3 --- Description Logics --- p.20 / Chapter 2.4 --- Fuzzy Set Theory --- p.23 / Chapter 2.5 --- Concepts and Categorization in Cognitive Psychology --- p.25 / Chapter 2.5.1 --- Theory of Concepts --- p.26 / Chapter 2.5.2 --- Goodness of Example versus Degree of Typicality --- p.28 / Chapter 2.5.3 --- Similarity between Concepts --- p.29 / Chapter 2.5.4 --- Context and Context Effects --- p.31 / Chapter 2.6 --- Handling of Uncertainty in Ontologies and Description Logics --- p.33 / Chapter 2.7 --- Typicality in Models for Knowledge Representation --- p.35 / Chapter 2.8 --- Semantic Similarity in Ontologies and the Semantic Web --- p.39 / Chapter 2.9 --- Contextual Reasoning --- p.41 / Chapter 3 --- A Formal Model of Ontology --- p.44 / Chapter 3.1 --- Rationale --- p.45 / Chapter 3.2 --- Concepts --- p.47 / Chapter 3.3 --- Characteristic Vector and Property Vector --- p.47 / Chapter 3.4 --- Subsumption of Concepts --- p.49 / Chapter 3.5 --- Likeliness of an Individual in a Concept --- p.51 / Chapter 3.6 --- Prototype Vector and Typicality --- p.54 / Chapter 3.7 --- An Example --- p.59 / Chapter 3.8 --- Similarity between Concepts --- p.61 / Chapter 3.9 --- Context and Contextualization of Ontology --- p.65 / Chapter 3.9.1 --- Formal Definitions --- p.67 / Chapter 3.9.2 --- Contextualization of an Ontology --- p.69 / Chapter 3.9.3 --- "Contextualized Subsumption Relations, Likeliness, Typicality and Similarity" --- p.71 / Chapter 4 --- Discussions and Analysis --- p.73 / Chapter 4.1 --- Properties of the Formal Model for Fuzzy Ontologies --- p.73 / Chapter 4.2 --- Likeliness and Typicality --- p.78 / Chapter 4.3 --- Comparison between the Proposed Model and Related Works --- p.81 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Comparison with Traditional Ontology Models --- p.81 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Comparison with Fuzzy Ontologies and DLs --- p.82 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Comparison with Ontologies modeling Typicality of Objects --- p.83 / Chapter 4.3.4 --- Comparison with Ontologies modeling Context --- p.84 / Chapter 4.3.5 --- Limitations of the Proposed Model --- p.85 / Chapter 4.4 --- "Significance of Modeling Likeliness, Typicality and Context in Ontologies" --- p.86 / Chapter 4.5 --- Potential Application of the Model --- p.88 / Chapter 4.5.1 --- Searching in the Semantic Web --- p.88 / Chapter 4.5.2 --- Benefits of the Formal Model of Ontology --- p.90 / Chapter 5 --- Conclusions and Future Work --- p.91 / Chapter 5.1 --- Conclusions --- p.91 / Chapter 5.2 --- Future Research Directions --- p.93 / Publications --- p.96 / Bibliography --- p.97

The advent of next-generation sequencing technologies is transforming biology by enabling individual researchers to sequence the genomes of individual organisms or cells on a massive scale. In order to realize the translational potential of this technology we will need advanced information systems to integrate and interpret this deluge of data. These systems must be capable of extracting the location and function of genes and biological features from genomic data, requiring the coordinated parallel execution of multiple bioinformatics analyses and intelligent synthesis of the results. The resulting databases must be structured to allow complex biological knowledge to be recorded in a computable way, which requires the development of logic-based knowledge structures called ontologies. To visualise and manipulate the results, new graphical interfaces and knowledge acquisition tools are required. Finally, to help understand complex disease processes, these information systems must be equipped with the capability to integrate and make inferences over multiple data sets derived from numerous sources. RESULTS: Here I describe research, design and implementation of some of the components of such a next-generation information system. I first describe the automated pipeline system used for the annotation of the Drosophila genome, and the application of this system in genomic research. This was succeeded by the development of a flexible graphoriented database system called Chado, which relies on the use of ontologies for structuring data and knowledge. I also describe research to develop, restructure and enhance a number of biological ontologies, adding a layer of logical semantics that increases the computability of these key knowledge sources. The resulting database and ontology collection can be accessed through a suite of tools. Finally I describe how the combination of genome analysis, ontology-based database representation and powerful tools can be combined in order to make inferences about genotype-phenotype relationships within and across species. CONCLUSION: The large volumes of complex data generated by high-throughput genomic and systems biology technology threatens to overwhelm us, unless we can devise better computing tools to assist us with its analysis. Ontologies are key technologies, but many existing ontologies are not interoperable or lack features that make them computable. Here I have shown how concerted ontology, tool and database development can be applied to make inferences of value to translational research.

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While naturalism is said to be the oldest and most popular view among contemporary philosophers and scientists, serious and pervasive questions linger concerning its nature, norms, goals, and status. I critically assess these issues in defending a metaphilosophy of naturalism. I begin in arguing that naturalism is neither a trivial nor empty worldview suffering from a lack of cohesion or content. In support of this, I develop a typology of naturalism from which I extract three “core” commitments exemplified by nearly all forms of the doctrine. I thus provide some preliminary, non-arbitrary grounds for the naturalist to defend the thesis from many objections. In the second chapter, I address the fundamental ontological commitments of metaphysical naturalism. Problems with defining naturalism are connected to the many ways these notions are understood, and I defend account of what it is for an entity, process, phenomenon, etc. to be natural or occur naturally. In furtherance of this, I defend in Chapters 3 and 4 an analysis of nature according to its two primary senses: The first is the particular sense, as picked out in claims referring to the nature of some entity, and the second is the universal sense, as is picked out in reference to nature itself. For both primary senses, I assess various arguments for acosmism, the thesis that nature does not exist (in either sense). In response to these challenges, I argue that the concept of nature in both senses is theoretically and ontologically fundamental, and thus indispensable to philosophy and science. The penultimate chapter constitutes an analysis of the relationship between naturalism and physicalism. I argue that even if the basic principles upon which physicalism rests are true, they nevertheless highly questionable and problematic. I connect and resolve these issues with an assessment of the relations between them and the Principle of Sufficient Reason. I conclude the chapter with an account of naturalization. In the final chapter, I criticize various interpretations of the claim that metaphysics and science, are and/or ought to be “continuous.” I argue that there are deep commonalities between metaphysics and science which frustrate attempts to show that there is a fundamental distinction between them. In conclusion, I show that metaphysical naturalism is not only more rich and complex than what most of its sympathizers and detractors believe, but also that it is consistent with many theses, norms, and posits of traditional, non-naturalistic approaches in philosophy generally.

Recent literature concerning laws of nature highlight the close relationship between general metaphysics and philosophy of science. In particular, a person's theoretical commitments in either have direct implications for her stance on laws. In this dissertation, I argue that an ontic structural realist should be a realist about laws, but only within a non-Whiteheadean process framework. Without the adoption of a process framework, any account of laws the ontic structural realist offers will require metaphysical commitments that are at odds with ontic structural realism. In arguing towards this aim, I adopt an attenuated methodological naturalistic stance to show that traditional substance metaphysics, of the sort neo-Aristotelians endorse, is problematic and that we have naturalistic reasons for further developing process metaphysics. I then apply this framework to develop a processual account of mereological structures and show how we can understand structures as being stable processes. In the final section, I argue that these are the kind of structures with which the ontic structural realist concerns herself. By adopting a realist account of laws the ontic structural realist can explain how these structures enter into modal and causal relations.

This thesis argues that the most prominent account of Protagoras in contemporary rhetorical scholarship, Edward Schiappa's Protagoras and Logos, loses critical historiographical objectivity in Platonic overdetermination of surviving historical artifacts. In the first chapter, I examine scholarship from the past thirty years to set a baseline for historiographical thought and argue that John Muckelbauer's conception of productive reading offers the best solution to the intellectual and discursive impasse in which contemporary Protagorean rhetorical theory currently resides. The second chapter explains the pitfalls of Platonic overdetermination and the ways in which Plato himself was inextricably situated within an ideological blinder, from which fair treatment of competing philosophical ideology becomes impossible. Finally, I argue for a historical Protagoras free of Platonic overdetermination by looking to Mario Untersteiner's 1954 Sophists. Untersteiner looks to Plato not for an accurate historical account, but for insight into why the great philosopher found the sophists to be such great perturbations. Rediscovering Protagoras through a Sophistic paradigm, I hope to open space for new, productive discourse on the first Sophist.

This research project participates in the genre of Performance art. It explores performativity in relation to Emmanuel Levinas' formulation of two interlacing modes of language, the ethical saying and the ontological, political said. The saying is of my originary, ethical relation to the other person that constitutes me, whereas the said is the mode of 'content', knowledge, and ontology. The project suggests that at least two registers of performativity pertain to the saying. One is in Simon Critchley's description of the saying as performative, prior to any decision to perform. In regard to another meaning of performativity, I propose that a political signification of art may be what Levinas calls a "reduction" of the said that 'performs' a showing of the saying. To perform a showing of the saying, would, in a Levinasian engagement, be to make apparent the ultimate interruption by ethics of ontology and politics, thus pointing to a constitutive non-closure of the political like that theorized by Jacques Derrida and by Critchley. Such a non-closure of the political is tentatively linked with critiques of Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics such as Claire Bishop's which draw on Jacques Lacan's notion of the subject. Performances explore the notion of the "reduction" of ontology resourced by Derrida's formulation of Levinas' later writing style as involving a sériature; serial and heterogeneous interruptions of the said1. The project has unfolded in a series of performance pieces, and will conclude with a final performance in March 2007. This exegesis articulates the major provocations for the project, contextualises the project with regard to selected art practices, and documents and discusses the major performance pieces.