This thesis sets out an interpretation of the value of community that I call communal reciprocity. It charts the history of that ideal, analyses its use in the work of an important academic proponent, G.A. Cohen, and develops a more comprehensive account of its main features. It also discusses the implications of communal reciprocity, including whether or not it conflicts with certain freedom-based concerns and its application, including in the assessment of market economies.

My model-theoretic realist account of science places linguistic systems and the corresponding non-linguistic structures at different stages of the scientific process. It is shown that science and its progress cannot be analysed in terms of only one of these strata. Philosophy of science literature offers mainly two approaches to the structure of scientific knowledge analysed in terms of theories and their models, the "statement" and the "non-statement" approaches. In opposition to the statement approach's belief that scientific knowledge is embodied in theories (formulated in some (first-order) symbolic language) with direct interpretative links - via so-called "bridge principles" - to reality, the defenders of the non-statement approach believe in an analysis where the language in which the theory is formulated plays a much smaller role than the (mathematical) structures which satisfy that theory. The model-theoretic realism expounded here retains the notion of a scientific theory as a (deductively closed) set of sentences, while simultaneously emphasising the interpretative role of the conceptual (i.a. mathematical) models of these theories. My criticism against the non-statement approach is based on the fact that merely "giving" the theory "in terms of' its mathematical structures leaves out any real interpretation of the nature and role of general terms in science. Against the statement approach's "direct" linking of general theoretical terms to reality, my approach interpolates models between theories and (aspects of) reality in the interpretative chain. The links between the general terms of scientific theories and their interpretations in the various models of the theory regulate the whole referential process. The terms of a theory are "general" in the sense that they are the result of certain abstractive conceptualisations of the object of scientific investigation and subsequent linguistic formulations of these conceptualisations. Their (particular) meanings can be "given back" only by interpreting them in the limited context of the various conceptual models of their theory and, finally, by finding an isomorphic relation between some substructure of the conceptual model in question and some empirical conceptualisation (model) of relevant experimental data. In this sense the notion of scientific "truth" becomes inextricably linked with that of articulated reference, as it - given its model-dependent nature - should be. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Litt. et Phil. (Philosophy)

This thesis applies T.M. Scanlon's version of contractualism to the problem of future generations. I begin by analyzing Rawls' contractarian account of just savings and find that there is no plausible composition of the original position that can deal with the inclusion of future people. I then examine Scanlon's contractualism and some objections to it before moving on to applying it to future people. I argue that the disanalogies between the intra- and inter-generational contexts do not preclude including future people in the contractualist framework, and that the theory avoids the non-identity problem. Part II of the thesis applies contractualism to three intergenerational topics and develops principles governing them: resource conservation, procreation, and population size. To conclude, I address how to deal with the fact that, in the case of future generations, we often have imperfect knowledge of what they will need, how our actions will affect them, and how many of them there will be.

African Cinema is an entity as diverse as the various countries, languages and cultures on this continent. The entertainment value of Cinema has been more popular than the study of its ideological significance, but nevertheless in a contemporary Africa where politics affect the social, cultural and economical survival of its citizens, Cinema can be used as a valuable asset and a powerful means of communication that can conscientize and educate African audiences. Thomas Hobbes’s leadership model and political theory of sovereignty, though a XVIIth century framework, can theoretically contribute in the analysis of the representation of African leadership styles in Cinema. This article analyzes four fiction films representing four different political leaders in, respectively, South Africa, Uganda, Cameroon and Nigeria. A film content analysis will explore the different representation of leadership styles, the personality of each leader, the power struggles in each society and how this may suggest value judgments about African leadership to the films’ various target audiences.

I examine a key shift in Michel Foucault's political philosophy from a position in which he was a staunch anti-humanist, to a final position in which he advocated not only the ability of the subject to influence his political condition, but also the individual freedoms assured by a democratic form of government. I begin by summarizing his overall critique of the post-Enlightenment West, and then explain how his observation of the Iranian Revolution served as a key turning point concerning his attitude towards the subject. Next, I elaborate on the direction of Foucault's late writings and examine how his new conceptualization of the subject leads him to embrace a democratic political system albeit free from Enlightenment philosophical foundations. I conclude by critiquing Foucault's foundationless democratic theory on the basis that it would ultimately undermine the individual freedoms and aesthetic development that he seeks to protect.

It is often remarked that we are entering into a biotech age that will afford us with the unprecedented means to remake human biology. The question is: should we use our imminent techno-scientific powers to ‘enhance’ and even ‘transcend’ our ‘natural’ limitations or remain human ‘as we have always been’? But is this the right question? This dissertation critically examines the human enhancement debate in bioethics and bioethics-adjacent literature. More specifically, it mobilizes a wide range of disciplinary tools to reflexively explore the discursive resonances, effects, and shortcomings of human enhancement as a conceptual framework. Through this exploration, I demonstrate that the well-established therapy/enhancement distinction depends upon deeply humanist ontologies that are insufficient for understanding and addressing the biotechnological ‘crisis’. In turn, I provide a posthumanist approach to thinking human nature, which highlights the relational, embodied, and differential character of subjectivity. Such an approach implies that we have always been cyborgs and, therefore, never been human as such. In doing so, I take a small step towards constructing post-enhancement frameworks for doing bioethics in our posthuman moment.

Orientador: Hércules de Araújo Feitosa / Banca: Marcelo Reicher Soares / Banca: Ana Cláudia de Jesus Golzio / Resumo: O professor Newton C. A. da Costa, notável lógico brasileiro, e colaboradores introduziram a noção de quase-verdade no contexto das ciências empíricas, onde há incompletude do conhecimento. Tal abordagem é considerada uma generalização para contextos parciais da proposta de formalização da verdade introduzida por Alfred Tarski. Inspirado nessa noção de quase-verdade, Silvestrini (2011) introduziu uma de nição de quase-verdade através da satisfação pragmática e, no mesmo trabalho apresentou, num sistema axiomático, uma lógica paraconsistente e trivalente, subjacente a essa noção, a qual denominou por Lógica da Verdade Pragmática (LPT- Logic of Pragmatic Truth ). Posteriormente, Feitosa e Silvestrini (2016) apresentaram algumas alterações no conjunto de axiomas de LPT e deram uma demonstração de adequação segundo a semântica matricial da lógica da verdade pragmática. Hoje, sistemas dedutivos alternativos ao axiomático têm sido de grande interesse para a área da teoria da prova e computabilidade, pois esses, em sua maioria, são métodos mais intuitivos. Alguns são caracterizados como algorítmicos, o que possibilita uma fácil implementação do método em computadores. Dentre esses sistemas de provas, destacamos o método dedutivo dos tableaux analíticos, que foi introduzido de uma forma bastante elegante por Smullyan (1968). Neste trabalho, introduzimos um sistema de tableaux analíticos para a Lógica da Verdade Pragmática e veri camos que todos os resultados dedutivos do sistema axio... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Professor Newton C. A. da Costa, notable Brazilian logician, and collaborators introduced the notion of quasi-truth in the context of the empirical sciences, where there is incompleteness of knowledge. Such an approach is considered a generalization of Tarski's proposal for partial contexts. Inspired by this notion of quasi-truth, Silvestrini (2011) introduced a de nition of quasi-truth through pragmatic satisfaction and, in the same work, presented, in an axiomatic system, a paraconsistent and trivalent logic, underlying this notion, which he called 'Logic of Pragmatic Truth (LPT)'. Later, Feitosa and Silvestrini (2016) presented some changes in the set of axioms of LPT and gave a proof of adequacy according to the trivalent matrix semantics of LPT. Nowadays, alternative axiomatic deductive systems have been of great interest to proof theory and computability, because these are in general intuitive methods. Some of them are characterized as algorithmic, which allows an easy implementation in computers. Among these systems of proof, we highlight the deductive method of analytic tableaux, which was introduced in an elegant way by Smullyan (1968). In this work, we introduce an analytic tableau system for the Logic of Pragmatic Truth and we verify that the results we can develop in the axiomatic system of the LPT coincide with the deductions in this analytic system of tableaux. / Mestre

A research project submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science. November 1995. / Bacon’s ideas have been modified and improved by some and contested by others over the centuries. Logical positivism, which evolved from empiricism, has two important tenets, namely, observation and deductive logic in reasoning. As with empiricism, knowledge is considered as objective and reliable (Chalmers, 1983). [Abbreviated Abstract. Open document to view full version] / GR 2016

No description available.

No description available.