This is a work of moral psychology in the course of which is presented a theory on the nature of guilt. The point of departure is a psychological phenomenon that I call “scrupulousness.” Scrupulousness is present when someone is in doubt about the morality of a minor past action. He or she is obsessively driven to determine whether his act was right or wrong. The result for the individual is vexing preoccupation in a cycle of internal casuistry. I explain this unhappy phenomenon as the result of anxiety over guilt understood as moral staining. A moral stain is a persistent residue adhering to the self created by a past wrongful action. To better explain moral stains, I borrow Christine Korsgaard’s theory of personal identity as constituted by one’s choices. With the aid of Korsgaard’s theory, I then consider how a belief in guilt as moral staining accounts for the worry of the scrupulous person. The Postscript of the Report first considers whether scrupulousness is justified by the explanation I have furnished. I answer this question in the negative. I also consider how anticipation of scrupulous worry could drive a person away from morally ambiguous situations, sometimes preventing him from taking the correct course of action in a form of “moral cowardice.” The Postscript secondly explains the significance of investigating scrupulousness and moral staining for philosophers. I argue that moral staining captures important aspects of the phenomenology of guilt and that it correctly accounts for the reality of guilt as more than a mere psychological state or feeling. To exhibit these strengths of the moral staining view, I compare and criticize Herbert Morris’ prominent model of guilt as consisting in the severance of valued relationships. / text

Silicon is used as a substrate for X-ray mirrors for correct imaging. The substrate needs to be mechanically bent to produce a certain curvature in order to condition and focus the X-ray beam. The X-rays impinge a mirror at very shallow angles, in order to reduce the amount of intensity loss in the diffraction process. The X-ray mirrors need to be bent to an extremely precise profile, and even small distortions from this profile can reduce the effectiveness of the X-ray mirrors. The X-rays that impinge on the mirror also produce large amounts of heat that can change the temperature of the substrate, resulting in its thermal expansion and distortion. By measuring the distortions in-situ caused by these temperature changes it may be possible to correct for these errors. A four-point bending fixture was designed for in-situ X-ray bending experiments in order to measure the distortions to the (100) silicon sample caused by the bending setup. By being able to measure the distortion caused by the setup, in like manner it would be possible to measure distortion caused by thermal expansion. Several alignments were needed in order to obtain accurate results, including adding copper powder on top of the sample. The copper powder that was added is not under stress, and therefore will not shift its reflection peak when the sample is under bending stress, thus serving as a reference in order to make corrections. The strain results were then compared to values calculated from mechanical deflections from bending. Despite the efforts to control accuracy, a significant variation appeared in the values when the top surface was in compression. As an alternative an IONIC stress-gauge was used to measure the deflections of the sample rather than calculate them. Another alternative was to calculate the deflection of the substrate by first determining the stress in the layer deposited onto the mirror's substrate by using sin²psi technique, then using Stoney's equation to determine the change in curvature of the substrate, with the stress in the layer being known. Several tests were performed to demonstrate the ability to measure these deflections.

This study seeks to describe the theodicy of Scottish theologian Peter Taylor Forsyth. We begin by making some preliminary comments concerning Forsyth’s conception of reality and his understanding of evil. We then examine Forsyth’s methodology of the theologia crucis, which he utilises in his justification of God. Forsyth sees a crucial event taking place at the Cross, “the self-justification of God”, one which constitutes the basis for all human attempts to justify God. We explore his multi-faceted understanding of this event, and how it leads to two outcomes which form the main thrusts of his theodicy. In Chapters 3 and 4, we look at the first such outcome, which is that God moves the world inexorably towards his glorious telos. We also consider here the significance of this first outcome for Forsyth’s theodicy, which is that it imparts to this theodicy a strongly teleological and historical nature. In Chapters 5 and 6, we consider the second outcome of God’s self-justification. This is the revelation that God suffered incomparably in the event of the Cross. We draw out two major implications of this for Forsyth’s theodicy, based upon the idea that God is the chief sufferer and giver in our battle against sin, and the possibility that Christ might serve as our model of faith in times of suffering. We turn, in our final two chapters, to examine Forsyth’s view on the origin of both sin and suffering, his understanding of the God-world relationship, and the significance of these for his theodicy. We conclude that Forsyth’s justification of God constitutes a robust and comprehensive response to the problem of evil, possibly rendering a valuable service to the task of Christian theodicy through its ability to integrate insights from what has hitherto been considered different approaches to the issue.

This dissertation consists of three essays on the role of social values in financial markets. Chapter 1 uses geographic variation in religious concentration to identify the effect of people's gambling behavior in financial market settings. We argue that religious background predicts people's gambling propensity, and that gambling propensity carries over into their behavior in financial markets. We test this conjecture in various financial market settings and find that the predominant local religion predicts variation in investors' propensity to hold stocks with lottery features, in the prevalence of broad-based employee stock option plans, in first-day returns to initial public offerings, and in the magnitude of the negative lottery-stock return premium. Collectively, our findings indicate that religious beliefs regarding the acceptability of gambling impact investors' portfolio choices, corporate decisions, and stock returns. In Chapter 2 I examine the impact of social norms against holding certain types of stocks (e.g. "sin stocks", or stocks with lottery features) on trading decisions and portfolio performance. I argue that trades which deviate from social norms are likely to reflect stronger information. Consistent with this hypothesis, I find that the most gambling-averse institutions earn high abnormal returns on their holdings of lottery stocks, outperforming the holdings of the most gambling-tolerant institutions. An analysis of institutions' sin stock holdings provides complementary evidence using another dimension of social norms, supporting the hypothesis that trades which deviate from norms reflect stronger information. In the third essay, we conjecture that people feel more optimistic about the economy and stock market when their own political party is in power. We find supporting evidence from Gallup survey data and analyze brokerage account data to confirm the impact of time-varying optimism on investors' portfolio choices. When the political climate is aligned with their political preferences, investors maintain higher systematic risk exposure while trading less frequently. When the opposite party is in power, investors exhibit stronger behavioral biases and make worse investment decisions. Investors improve their raw portfolio performance when their own party is in power, but the risk-adjusted improvement is economically small. / text

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

In the later decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth, large numbers of Canadian women were stepping out of the shadows of private life and into the public world of work and political action. Among them, both a cause and an effect of these sweeping social changes, was the first generation of Canadian women to work as professional authors. Although these women were not unified by ideology, genre, or date of birth, they are studied here as a generation defined by their time and place in history, by their material circumstances, and by their collective accomplishment. Chapters which focus on E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), the Eaton sisters (Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna), Joanna E. Wood, and Sara Jeannette Duncan explore some of the many commonalities and interrelationships among the members of this generation as a whole. This project combines archival research with analytical bibliography in order to clarify and extend our knowledge of Johnson’s and Duncan’s professional lives and publishing histories, and to recover some of Wood’s “lost” stories. This research offers a preliminary sketch of the long tradition of the platform performance (both Native and non-Native) with which Johnson and others engaged. It explores the uniquely innovative ethnographic writings of Johnson, Duncan, and the Eaton sisters, among others, and it explores thematic concerns which relate directly to the experiences of working women. Whether or not I convince other scholars to treat these authors as a generation, with more in common than has previously been supposed, the strong parallels revealed in these pages will help to clarify and contextualize some of their most interesting work. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2011-10-14 20:59:21.45

<p> <p>&nbsp / </p> </p> <p align="left">The aim of this research project was to seek a reinterpretation of the Christian motif of' bearing one's cross'. This motif has been widely criticized by feminist theologians as an instrument that exacerbates the oppression of women, since it encourages self-sacrifice and in this way legitimizes abusive relationships.</p>

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal