Clinical psychologists’ experiences of training are under-represented in the research area, particularly in the field of transformational and experiential learning and its influence on trainees during their training. Yet, it is a growing topic of interest for training providers and commissioners. Understanding whether the current method of training, using problem-based learning at the University of Hertfordshire (UH), is effective in preparing trainees to work in the NHS as clinical psychologists may have wider implications for clinical psychology training and practice. This thesis aimed at exploring clinical psychologists’ narratives of identity changes through problem-based learning (PBL). For this purpose, I chose to explore their reflective PBL written accounts using a narrative analysis to identify plots and sub-plots of identity changes within their PBL stories. I knowingly took a social constructionist stance to frame this project as it reflects my constructions of clinical psychology and the epistemological choice of the UH course. This means that this research situates itself within a particular context and does not claim any truth, but proposes a constructed view on identity changes during training and their implications for clinical practice. The analysis enabled me to identity three main plots: ‘identity changes through the PBL group’, ‘experimenting with alternative roles and identities’ and ‘Identity changes through PBL & training’. The first plot was characterised by anxiety, vulnerability, tensions between individualism and collectivism and the impact of differences. The second plot was characterised by trainee psychologists finding the balance between process, task and reflections, sharing and connecting with others, changing their relationship with theories; and working to empower themselves. The third plot highlighted the demands of PBL and training and PBL’s place in training. These factors seemed to have influenced and contributed to identity changes in clinical psychologists engaged in PBL during their training at UH. The discussion highlighted which aspects of PBL relate to identity changes and their implications for training and clinical practice. To conclude, I shared my growing interest for further exploration. I also highlighted the ever-evolving nature of PBL and the importance of exploring its use in training and its implications for the professional development of trainee clinical psychologists. Finally, the project ends with reflections about the research process and epistemological considerations.

Part I investigates the idea that kinds (as opposed to individuals) have some modal properties. I argue that concerning typical kind-essentialist claims there is a non-trivial question—the transworld identity problem—about what the relevant kind terms are supposed to refer to in non-actual possible worlds. I reject several ideas for solving the problem. The upshot is a worry about the coherence of modal talk concerning kinds. Waiving this worry for the sake of argument, in Part II the target is the use of modal talk in the sciences. I offer a deflationary account of modalities, based on the familiar idea of reducing modalities to logical relationships between non-modal statements and non-modal background theories. I argue that this account is adequate for making sense of modal talk in the sciences. Moreover, I argue that irreducible modal properties of the world, if there are any, cannot be scientifically discovered or inferred. Thus we have a number of arguments against modalities: the threat of incoherence, their epistemic inaccessibility, and the dispensability of modal talk in the sciences.

Part I investigates the idea that kinds (as opposed to individuals) have some modal properties. I argue that concerning typical kind-essentialist claims there is a non-trivial question—the transworld identity problem—about what the relevant kind terms are supposed to refer to in non-actual possible worlds. I reject several ideas for solving the problem. The upshot is a worry about the coherence of modal talk concerning kinds. Waiving this worry for the sake of argument, in Part II the target is the use of modal talk in the sciences. I offer a deflationary account of modalities, based on the familiar idea of reducing modalities to logical relationships between non-modal statements and non-modal background theories. I argue that this account is adequate for making sense of modal talk in the sciences. Moreover, I argue that irreducible modal properties of the world, if there are any, cannot be scientifically discovered or inferred. Thus we have a number of arguments against modalities: the threat of incoherence, their epistemic inaccessibility, and the dispensability of modal talk in the sciences.

Šio magistro darbo tikslas – paanalizuoti tapatybės problemą Jono Meko dienoraščiuose. Pagrindiniai uždaviniai yra aptarti, kas apskritai yra tapatybė, kokias tapatybės rūšis išskiria įvairūs mokslininkai; panagrinėti, kaip tapatybė atskleidžiama J. Meko knygoje „Žmogus be vietos. Nervuoti dienoraščiai��� bei jo kino dienoraščiuose „Prarasta, prarasta, prarasta“, „Rojus dar neprarastas“ ir kt. Taip pat dienoraščiai nagrinėjami kaip autobiografija. Asmens tapatybė yra daugiasluoksnė, susidedanti iš įvairių socialinių, kultūrinių, etninių dalykų. Asmens Aš yra refleksyvus projektas, t.y. tapatumas nėra pastovus, o kintantis. Asmens biografiją galima prilyginti asmens tapatumui, nes jis formuojasi per laiką. Ribinėse situacijose žmogui tapatybė iškyla kaip problema. J. Meko dienoraščiuose galima išskirti socialinės, tautinės ir kultūrinės tapatybės problemas. Socialinę tapatybę galima būtų apibrėžti kaip priklausymą tam tikrai socialinei grupei. Menininkas visa savo esme yra lietuvis ūkininkas, tačiau tas supratimas yra problemiškas, nes jis gyvena ne kaime, ne Lietuvoje, jis neturi ūkio. J. Meko savęs, kaip ūkininko, apibrėžimas yra iliuzinis. Autoriaus tautinę identifikaciją galėtume priskirti moderniajam nacionalizmo tipui. Panaudodamas ikimodernųjį etninį paveldą, bendros praeities pojūtį, „pirmykščius“ etninius ryšius kaip subjektyvų pagrindą, jis stengiasi išsaugoti savo tautinę tapatybę. Meko kultūrinė tapatybė yra susiformavusi iš lietuvių ir pasaulio kultūrų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The aim of this master’s paper is to analyze identity problem in the diaries of Jonas Mekas. The main objectives are to discuss what identity is in general, what kinds of identity are distinguished by scholars; to analyze how the identity is revealed in the book by J. Mekas “A man without a place. Nervous diaries” as well as in his cinema diaries “Lost, lost, lost”, “Heaven is not lost” and others. Also the diaries are analyzed as an autobiography. Individual’s identity is multi-layered, comprising of various social, cultural, ethnical components. Individual’s “I” is a reflexive project, i.e. identity is unstable and changing. Individual’s biography can be compared to his identity because it forms in the period of time. In limitary situations identity arises as a problem for a man. In J. Mekas diaries social, national and cultural identity problems are distinguished. Social identity can be described as dependence to particular social group. An artist in all his nature is Lithuanian farmer, but this understanding is problematic because he lives nor in the countryside, nor in Lithuania and he does nor own a farm. The description of J. Mekas as a farmer is illusory. Author’s national identity could be attributed to the type of modern nationalism. He tries to save his national identity through using pre-modern ethnic heritage, the sense of common past, and primitive ethnic relationships as a subjective basis. Mekas’ cultural identity is formed out of Lithuanian... [to full text]

This dissertation provides a defense of the normative intuition known as the Procreation Asymmetry, according to which there is a strong moral reason not to create a life that will foreseeably not be worth living, but there is no moral reason to create a life just because it would foreseeably be worth living. Chapter 1 investigates how to reconcile the Procreation Asymmetry with our intuitions about another recalcitrant problem case in population ethics: Derek Parfit's Non-Identity Problem. I show that what has prevented philosophers from developing a theory that gives a satisfactory account of both these problems is their tacit commitment to a teleological conception of well-being, as something to be `promoted'. Replacing this picture with one according to which our reasons to confer well-being on people are conditional on their existence allows me to do better. It also enables us to understand some of the deep structural parallels between seemingly disparate normative phenomena such as procreating and promising. Chapter 2 attempts to connect my defense of the Procreation Asymmetry to corresponding evaluative claims about the goodness of the outcomes produced by procreative decisions. I propose a view, the `biconditional buck-passing view of outcome betterness', according to which facts about the comparative goodness of outcomes are a function of our reasons for bringing about one outcome rather than another under certain conditions. This enables me to derive an Evaluative Procreation Asymmetry from the corresponding normative claims established in Chapter 1. The biconditional buck-passing view also provides me with a principled basis for challenging a version of the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Principle. This, in turn, permits me to provide a novel solution to another famous problem in population ethics: Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox. Finally, in Chapter 3, I rebut some key objections to the Procreation Asymmetry by showing that upholding it does not commit us to anti-natalism and that it is compatible with a moral concern for the long-term survival of humanity. / Philosophy

This paper is concerned with the examination of Caspar Hare's (2007) de dicto approach to the non-identity problem and specifically the non-identity case of The Inconsiderate Mother. On the de dicto approach an act can be wrong if it makes things de dicto worse for a role, even if that act does not make things worse for any actual person that fills that role. In this paper I provide a brief overview and reconstruction of Hare's argument. I argue that objections to Hare's arguments due to David Wasserman (2008) do not give us reason to dismiss the de dicto approach. Lastly I consider an objection to the effect that Hare's solution to the non-identity problem is ad hoc. I conclude that the de dicto approach faces some challenges but that we cannot readily dismiss it.

Magistro darbe "Sala šiuolaikinėje moterų prozoje" analizuojama salos tema pasirinktuose trijuose mterų romanuose - Birutės jonuškaitės "Didžioji sala", Sue Monk Kidd "Undinės krėslas", Victoria Hislop "Sala". Remiantis feministinės kritikos, hermeneutiniu ir lyginamuoju metodu buvo siektina atskleisti salos erdves - geografinę, dvasinę ir mitinę, bei jos funkcijas, prasmes moterų gyvenime. Klasikiniuose vyrų romanuose sala atsiskleidžia kaip veikėjų prieglobstis, kalėjimas, išbandymų vieta ar idealusis pasaulis.Darbo analizė atskleidžia gilesnį salos kontekstą - jos geografinė erdvė ir laikas susilieja su moters pasąmone, atveria moteriai vidinio pasaulio erdves. aiškinamasi, kokiu būdu moterų proza per įvairius mitinius simbolius analizuoja moters tapatybės, saviidentifikacijos problemą, kuri išsprendžiama tik salos kontekste. / In the Master’s degree work called „An Island in Women’s Contemporary Prose” it is analyzed the theme of an island. To analyze the following theme there were chosen three novels written by women―writers, i. e. Birutė Jonuškaitė „The Great Island”, Sue Monk Kidd „The Mermaid Chair” and Victoria Hislop „The Island”. The aim of the work is to reveal spiritual, mythological and geographical spaces of the island, as well as its funkctions and meanings in women’s life. The aim of revealing spaces was reached with the help of feminist criticism, as well as hermeneutic and comparative methods. In classical novels written by men―writers the island is show as the main character’s shelter, prison, challenge place or perfect world. Whereas, work analysis presents us another island’s concept in the novels written by women―writers. The island’s geographical space and time merge together with woman’s subconsciousness revealing spaces of inner world for the woman. In the work it is analyzed in which way women’s prose with the help of various mythological symbols analizes woman’s identity and self―identity problem which is solved only in the context of the island.

The work in this paper is motivated by a privacy scenario in which the identity of certain persons (represented as anonymous individuals) should be hidden.We assume that factual information about known individuals (i.e., individuals whose identity is known) and anonymous individuals is stored in an ABox and general background information is expressed in a TBox, where both the TBox and the ABox are publicly accessible. The identity problem then asks whether one can deduce from the TBox and the ABox that a given anonymous individual is equal to a known one. Since this would reveal the identity of the anonymous individual, such a situation needs to be avoided. We first observe that not all Description Logics (DLs) are able to derive any such equalities between individuals, and thus the identity problem is trivial in these DLs. We then consider DLs with nominals, number restrictions, or function dependencies, in which the identity problem is non-trivial. We show that in these DLs the identity problem has the same complexity as the instance problem. Finally, we consider an extended scenario in which users with different rôles can access different parts of the TBox and ABox, and we want to check whether, by a sequence of rôle changes and queries asked in each rôle, one can deduce the identity of an anonymous individual.

Horrendous evils pose distinctive challenges for belief in an ethically perfect God. To home in on these challenges, I construct an ethical framework for theodicy by sketching four cases of human action where horrors are either caused, permitted, or risked, either for pure benefit (i.e., a benefit that does not avert a still greater harm) or for harm avoidance. I then bring the framework and the moral valuations confirmed by this casuistry to bear on the project of theodicy. I construct four analogous structures – one for each case – and identify examples of each structure in theodicies in contemporary philosophy of religion. I summarize each theodicy and evaluate whether it is structurally promising with respect to horrendous evils. That is, if the proposed interconnected set of facts and reasons were true, would God be ethically in the clear? My initial conclusions impugn the dominant structural approach of depicting God as causing or permitting horrors in individual lives for the sake of some merely pure benefit. This approach is insensitive to relevant asymmetries in the justificatory demands made by horrendous and non-horrendous evil and in the justificatory work done by averting harm and bestowing pure benefit. I next argue that the structurally promising theodicies I have identified are implausible due to their overestimation of the extent to which finite human agents can bear primary responsibility for horrendous evils and their underestimation of the importance for theodicy of being consonant with a broadly Darwinian approach to evolutionary theory. The project of theodicy is in trouble. The second half of my thesis develops an approach to theodicy that falls outside my proffered taxonomy. Following a suggestion of Leibniz, Robert Adams has argued that theodicy can be aided by the insight that almost all of the evil of the actual world is metaphysically necessary for the community of actual world inhabitants to be comprised of the specific individuals who comprise it. Beginning with this insight, I develop (what I term) Non-Identity Theodicy. It suggests that God allows the evil he does in order to create and love the specific individuals comprising the community of inhabitants of the actual world. This approach to theodicy is unique because the justifying good recommended is neither harm-aversion nor pure benefit. It is not a good that betters the lives of individual human persons (for they wouldn’t exist otherwise), but it is the individual human persons themselves. In order to aim successfully at the creation of particular individuals, however, God would need a control of history so complete that it might be argued to be inconsistent with beliefs about human free will that are important to some theologies. I construct a second version of Non-Identity Theodicy designed to avoid this problem by considering whether God’s justifying motivation for allowing the evil of this world could be his aiming for beings of our type, even if it could not be his aiming for particular individuals. I suggest that God would be interested in loving those he creates under various descriptions (e.g., biological, psychological, and narrative descriptions), and argue that a horror-prone environment is necessary for us to be the type of being we are under each of the descriptions. I assess the structural promise and plausibility of Non-Identity Theodicy. In order to do so, I engage with Derek Parfit’s non-identity problem and with some influential assumptions in the ethics of procreation literature. I end by recapping what I take to be the key areas of overemphasis and under-emphasis in contemporary theodicy.

The question of whether there might be a moral obligation to select against disability in our offspring has received considerable attention and attracted great controversy within both the philosophical community and beyond over the last couple of decades. Within this thesis I examine this question, taking as a basis for discussion the view that prospective parents should be formally free to choose whether or not to select against disability in their offspring in the absence of adequate justifying reasons to the contrary. I then move on to examine and outline arguments that suggest variously and for a plethora of different reasons that selection against disability should be condemned morally or required. After this is done and it is noted that the sheer volume of different positions and arguments requires a more specific focus I, in my thesis articles take what I view to be the strongest of moral reasons, person-affecting reasons, and look to the question of whether it is possible ground a moral obligation to select against disability in our offspring in the person affecting harms that our reproductive choices might produce. In the first paper I ask whether the non- identity problem really poses such an insurmountable obstacle to the claim that to select against disability may harm those that are created as a result of our selection choices. This leads to the conclusion that on certain accounts of personal identity over time and trans-world identity it is possible to determine harm in a number of previously non-identity cases of which the selection against disability case is one. In the second paper I broaden my focus slightly by looking to the possible harms that our procreative choices might impose on others than the children we may create: ourselves, our existing dependents and existing members of society. In doing this it is shown that our reproductive choices do, at least in societies with advanced social and medical welfare systems, have the potential to impose significant burdens on others. However, whilst this is so, it is also demonstrated that this is not necessarily a decisive reason to condemn a reproductive choice to select for or to fail to select against disability in our offspring. In my final paper I take a slightly different approach, focusing less on the question of whether there should be a moral obligation to select against disability in our offspring and more on the question of whether there should exist a legal imperative to do so. Taking as a basis a liberal approach to the moral limits of law I suggest that impingements on individual liberty may only be justified when it can be shown that our reproductive choices cause significant harms or offence to others, I ask whether the recent insertion into English and Welsh Law of a prohibition on selection for disability can be justified. In line with the findings of the previous two papers which are far from conclusive and by examining the reasons given in legal and policy documents in England and Wales relating to this prohibition I suggest that as it stands such a prohibition cannot be justified. This ultimately leads to a rather unsatisfying – but perhaps inevitable, in light of the messy nature of reproduction – conclusion: It is possible to discuss the ethics of selection against and for disability on person-affecting accounts of morality and to discuss the matter in this way offers sensitive and sensible prescriptions. However, such discussions turn out to be, in virtue of the many competing claims of those affected by reproductive decisions and policy, far more complex than might be assumed and do not fit neatly with the commonly held moral intuition that it is always morally preferable to select against disability in our offspring.