Thesis (Ph. D)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-182).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-240).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-216). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on November 12, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.

The research aims to propose a narrative of the experience of listening and to provide some first examples of its possible application. This is done in three parts. Part One, “Words”, aims to methodologically frame the narrative by discussing the limits and requirements of a theory of listening. After discussing the difficulties of building an objective characterization of the listening experience, the research proposes that any theorization on listening can only express a point of view that is implied by descriptions of listening both in linguistic terms and in the data they involve. The analysis of theories about listening is therefore conducted through a grammatical path that unfolds by following the syntactic roles of the words involved in theoretical claims about listening. Starting from the problem of synonymy, the analysis moves around the subject, the object, adjectives and adverbs to finally discuss the status of the references of the discourses on listening. The Part One ends by claiming the need to reintroduce the subject in theories about listening and proposes to attribute the epistemological status of the narrative to any discourse about the listening experience. This implies that any proposed narrative must substitute its truth-value with the instrumental value that is expressed by the idea of “viability”. The Part Two, “Patterns”, is devoted to introducing a narrative of listening. This is first informally introduced in terms of the experience of a distinction within the sonic flow. After an intermission dedicated to connecting the idea of distinction to Gaston Bachelard’s metaphysics of time, the narrative is finally presented as a dialectics among three ways of organizing perceptive distinctions. Three perceptive modes of distinctions are presented as a basic mechanism that is responsible for articulating the sonic continuum in a complex structure of expectations and reactions, in terms of patterns, that is constantly renewed under the direction of statistical learning. The final chapter of the Part Two aims to briefly apply the narrative of pattern structures to dealing with the experience of noise. Part Three aims to show the “viability” of the proposed narrative of listening. First, a method for analysing music by listening is discussed. Then, a second chapter puts the idea of pattern structures in contact with music composition, as a framework that can be applied to data sonification, installations, music production and to the didactics of composition. Finally, the last chapter is devoted to the discussion of the idea of “soundscape” and “identity formation”, in order to show the potential of applying the proposed narrative to the context of cultural and social studies.

Silence is a negative term denoting absence of sounds. However, our ordinary way of speaking about silence suggests that the latter is some perceptible reality, 'some- thing' perceived. But is it legitimate to say that we hear silence - absence of sound? What implications about perception does such a way of speaking have? The aim of the present thesis is to analyse these questions. The analysis unfolds along three axes. The first part of the thesis reconstructs the problem of perception of silence in John Cage's 'silent piece' 4'33" in context of its conceptual origin, Cage's aesthetics, and reflection of his work in his written texts. Hence the introduction of the problem of perceptible silence in recent thought. It discusses the thesis that we cannot hear absolute silence, not even in the soundproof chamber, and considers the question whether it is adequate to say that we can hear silence if we expect to hear music, but the music does not sound - a question that was raised by the premiere of 4'33". The second part of the thesis scrutinizes the position according to which we can directly hear/listen to silence which is the absence of sounds, namely the arguments of Roy Sorensen and Ian Phillips. Emphasis is put on Sorensen's theory since it is in direct contrast to Cage's position (though Sorensen...

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:12:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RenatoMJ.pdf: 302842 bytes, checksum: 740d121ea6f32e914bba6e0a61a27825 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-11-26 / Starting from the idea that the result of the Humean analysis of causal inferences must be applied coherently to the remaining part of his work, including its moral theory, the present master thesis aims at investigating whether Hume?s moral philosophy is essentially based on feeling, or whether this would not be rather essentially a consequence of our causal inferences in human actions and deliberations. The main idea consists in showing that our moral inferences, to the extent that they are for Hume empirical , depend on our belief in a connexion between something which has been previously observed and something which is not being observed ( but that it is expected to occur or to be observed in the future). Thus, this very belief must base our moral inferences concerning the actions and deliberations of the individuals. Therefore, must e o ipso induce us to associate actions and behaviors, as well as character and moral claims of men to certain moral feelings. Accordingly, the thesis is unfolded in three chapters. In the first chapter Hume?s theory of the perception is reported as essential part of the explanation or the principles that bind ideas in our mind and constitute our inferences. In the second chapter, the Humean analysis of causal inferences is presented and the way they contribute in the formation of our moral inferences is explained. In the third and last chapter, the formation of our moral inferences and the real contribution of the doctrine of freedom and necessity for the examination or our actions are analysed and discussed. / Partindo da id?ia de que o resultado da an?lise humeana das infer?ncias causais deve aplicar-se coerentemente ao restante de sua obra, incluindo sua teoria moral, a presente disserta??o objetiva investigar se a filosofia moral de Hume se fundamenta no sentimento, ou se isto n?o seria antes essencialmente uma conseq??ncia de nossas infer?ncias causais. A id?ia central consiste em mostrar que nossas infer?ncias morais, na medida em que para Hume s?o emp?ricas, dependem da nossa cren?a em uma conex?o entre o que foi anteriormente observado e algo que n?o ? observado ( mas espera-se ocorrer ou observar-se no futuro ). Assim, essa mesma cren?a fundamentaria nossas infer?ncias morais sobre as a??es dos indiv?duos, e conseq?entemente, nos levaria a associar determinados comportamentos, bem como o car?ter e as convic??es morais dos homens a certos sentimentos morais . A disserta??o desdobra-se em tr?s cap?tulos. No primeiro cap?tulo relata-se a teoria da percep??o e mostra-se que ela constitui parte essencial da explica??o das nossas infer?ncias . No segundo cap?tulo, trata-se da an?lise das infer?ncias causais e como contribuem na forma??o das nossas infer?ncias morais. No terceiro, a partir da an?lise anterior, investiga-se a forma??o de nossas infer?ncias morais e a real contribui??o da doutrina da necessidade e da liberdade para o exame de nossas a??es.

While both public opinion and scholars around the world are currently pointing out the danger of increasingly popular life-logging devices, this book articulates this debate by distinguishing between automatic and manual life-logging approaches. Since new definitions of life-logging have excluded the latter approach and have been mainly focused on effortless life-logging technologies such as Google Glass and Quantified Self applications in general, the second part of this thesis theoretically frames life-stowing.Through extensive etymological research, I have defined life-stowing as a manual and effortful practice conducted by life-stowers, individuals who devote their life to sampling reality in predefined frameworks. As part of this book, an historical overview introduces life-stowers and distinguishes between Apollonian and Dionysian varieties of these practitioners. Lastly, in order to understand the future reception of life-stowing, particularly in relation to digital media, I have disclosed my ongoing life-stowing project to a small audience. / Den samtida samhälls- och forskningsdebatt, där de allt mer populära teknologierna för life-logging ofta framställs som farliga, vidgas och utvecklas i denna bok genom ett särskiljande av automatiska och manuella tekniker för life-loggning. Eftersom nya definitioner av life-loggning i stor utsträckning har exkluderat manuella tekniker och fokuserat på egenmätning som inte kräver så mycket av användaren, såsom GoogleGlass, innehåller avhandlingen också ett teoretisk utforskande av begreppet lifestowing. Genom omfattande etymologisk forskning definieras life-stowing i avhandlingen som en manuell och ansträngande praktik utförd av life-stowers, personer som vigt sina liv åt att samla och spara bitar av verkligenheten enligt fördefinierade ramar. I den historiska översikten introduceras två typer av life-stowers, den Apollonianska och den Dionysiska. Slutligen, för att förstå det framtida mottagandet av life-stowing i relation till digitala medier, presenteras författarens egna life stowingprojekt för en mindre publik.

Classical value estimation reinforcement learning algorithms do not perform very well in dynamic environments. On the other hand, the reinforcement learning of animals is quite flexible: they can adapt to dynamic environments very quickly and deal with noisy inputs very effectively. One feature that may contribute to animals' good performance in dynamic environments is that they learn and perceive the time to reward. In this research, we attempt to learn and perceive the time to reward and explore situations where the learned time information can be used to improve the performance of the learning agent in dynamic environments. The type of dynamic environments that we are interested in is that type of switching environment which stays the same for a long time, then changes abruptly, and then holds for a long time before another change. The type of dynamics that we mainly focus on is the time to reward, though we also extend the ideas to learning and perceiving other criteria of optimality, e.g. the discounted return, so that they can still work even when the amount of reward may also change. Specifically, both the mean and variance of the time to reward are learned and then used to detect changes in the environment and to decide whether the agent should give up a suboptimal action. When a change in the environment is detected, the learning agent responds specifically to the change in order to recover quickly from it. When it is found that the current action is still worse than the optimal one, the agent gives up this time's exploration of the action and then remakes its decision in order to avoid longer than necessary exploration. The results of our experiments using two real-world problems show that they have effectively sped up learning, reduced the time taken to recover from environmental changes, and improved the performance of the agent after the learning converges in most of the test cases compared with classical value estimation reinforcement learning algorithms. In addition, we have successfully used spiking neurons to implement various phenomena of classical conditioning, the simplest form of animal reinforcement learning in dynamic environments, and also pointed out a possible implementation of instrumental conditioning and general reinforcement learning using similar models.

Le présent travail est une analyse du concept d’instrument qui en fait apparaître les exigences théoriques et demande si et dans quelle mesure le système de Thomas d’Aquin les remplit. D’abord, on montre que la notion d’instrument telle que Thomas la définit en général et conformément à l’aristotélisme dont il hérite — à savoir, comme un «moteur mû» — est contradictoire, dans la mesure où rien, d’après Thomas, ne peut être à la fois moteur et mû selon le même mouvement. Ensuite, on montre que la notion d’instrument telle que Thomas la redéfinit dans le contexte restreint de sa théologie sacramentelle — à savoir, comme ce qui «agit en vertu d’un autre» — échappe à cette contradiction, même si elle est, à son tour, problématique, parce qu’elle implique qu’un même pouvoir (virtus) transite de l’agent principal à l’instrument. Il faut étudier le modèle auquel Thomas renvoie — à savoir, l’être intentionnel des espèces sensibles — pour répondre à ce problème : il s’agit alors de montrer comment l’apparence peut être conçue comme une propriété en transit numériquement identique en plusieurs sujets (la chose, le milieu, le percepteur). Enfin, on justifie l’application de ce modèle au pouvoir instrumental grâce à deux thèses centrales de l’ontologie thomasienne des pouvoirs — à savoir, qu’ils sont distincts de la forme substantielle et qu’ils en fluent — qui reviennent à accorder au pouvoir, comme tel, le même statut ontologique qu’à l’espèce sensible, c’est-à-dire un être intentionnel (esse intentionale). On en conclut que ce qui fonde, en définitive, la causalité instrumentale, ce n’est pas tant la physique d’Aristote que l’ontologie des pouvoirs de Thomas. / The aim of this study is to offer a better understanding of instrumental causation in Aquinas. It starts by calling into question the idea that an instrument is a « moved mover ». Behind this apparently innocuous phrase lurks a contradiction, for, as Aquinas states, it is impossible for something to both be a mover and be moved according to the same motion. Having argued that this contradiction may not be satisfyingly solved, an alternate definition is suggested, according to which an instrument acts "in virtue of another". Indeed, according to Aquinas’s sacramental theology, an instrument acts insofar as it contains a certain power (virtus). This power isn’t its own, but the individual property of something else, namely the principal cause. The question here is to account for what seems to be a transferable trope: an individual power present both in the principal and in the instrumental cause. Aquinas does this by comparing the power in the instrument to the species of color in the air. We follow this cue. First, by understanding how a sensible species may be understood as numerically identical across different subjects, namely the sensible object, the medium and the perceiver. Second, by turning to Aquinas’s thesis that powers are distinct and flow from a thing’s substantial form. This, it is argued, amounts to granting powers the same ontological status as sensible species, namely intentional being (esse intentionale). The study concludes that it is not Aristotelian physics but Aquinas’s metaphysics of powers that ultimately grounds instrumental causation.