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<p>One of the central questions in the philosophy of sounds and hearing is the question of space: what spaces or locations, if any, do sound perceptions make one aware of? When I hear a sound, do I perceive the direction of the sound? The direction (or distance) of the sound's source? The boundaries or dimensions of the space the sound is produced in, or of the source itself? And if sound perceptions do make one aware of space, then with what level of determinacy?</p> <p>In the first chapter of this essay, I describe my approach to sounds and hearing, and state what I take to be the fundamental challenges for any view of sound perception. For one, I take the everyday experience of sounds to be one of the most significant obstacles to an account of sound perception, and one that has scarcely been recognized as such. In everyday hearing, we are not the least bit concerned with sounds. We use sounds to gather information about the behaviour of their sources, which are typically the object of our attention whenever we perceive a sound. If I hear the sound of a car honking or a person speaking, I immediately pay attention to the car and how I can avoid it, or to the person and the meaning they intend to communicate. In everyday hearing, our awareness of sounds is similar to our awareness of windowpanes while watching the goings on outside. Consequently, the everyday experience of sounds is problematic as a model of sound perception.</p> <p>In the second and third chapters, I discuss the two most popular views of sound perception in the philosophical literature, the remote view and the non-spatial view. Since these views have received much attention in the literature, I spend more time raising objections to them in chapter III than describing them in chapter II. One of the principle aims of this essay is to make the case that both of these views are mistaken, despite the valuable insights contained in each.</p> <p>In the fourth and fifth chapters, I discuss the medial view. While the idea that sounds are sound waves located in a medium is the predominant view of sounds themselves in auditory science and the history of philosophy, the view that we hear sounds to be located in the medium has received little attention. Some objections to the medial view have been raised, which I address in chapter V, but very little has been said to defend or even describe the medial view. Part of the motivation for this essay is that I am struck by the fact that the medial view, which would seem to follow naturally from auditory science and the history of philosophy, has been so little discussed. Consequently, the bulk of this essay is dedicated to a description and defence of the medial view.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

This diploma thesis deals with the issue of the driver's view from the vehicle, respectively the measurement of the field of views and blind spots. This thesis takes into account the 360° view around the vehicle. The first part of the thesis is devoted to the theoretical outlook of the vehicle. The reader becomes acquainted with the progressive development of the 360° view in a vehicle, beginning with the past and leading up to the present enhancements in today's vehicles. The reader will also understand, the position and movement of the eyes in a vehicle, the detailed description of the direct forward look, and the indirect reverse look. Subsequently, the theoretical part is devoted to the methodology of visibility measurements according to the prescribed standards of SAE and EHK. The theoretical part concludes with a chapter explaining how the theory is used in the practical part of the thesis. The practical part is devoted to the design of the 360° views of the vehicle and the description of the methodology. Another element of the practical part is the measurement protocol. This section deals with all the calculations for the complete driver's view, which was shown as an example on one of the sixteen vehicles measured. The last chapter compares, evaluates and reviews the results of all measured 360° views and blind spots around the vehicle.

This thesis is about ‘Dual View’ displays. These are displays that can show different images to different people. For example, the driver of a car could view a GPS map, whilst the passenger who looks at the display from a different angle, could watch a movie. This thesis describes some of the research that took the project from an idea to a refined product. Sharp’s first dual view display is prototyped, and problems such as crosstalk between the two views are seen. These problems are analysed and rectified to bring the device up to a high standard. In July 2005 Sharp used this technology to launch the world’s first dual view product. Since then a new design of dual view display has been investigated. This design is theoretically optimised and experimentally tested. The new design is shown to provide dual view with greater head freedom, greater efficiency, and lower crosstalk than the original parallax barrier design.

This study is about the nature of persons and personal identity. It belongs to a tradition that maintains that in order to understand what it is to be a person we must clarify what personal identity consists in. In this pursuit, I differentiate between the problems (i) How do persons persist? and (ii) What facts, if any, does personal identity consist in? Concerning the first question, I argue that persons persist three-dimensionally (the endurance view), and not four-dimensionally (the perdurarne view), on the ground that objects must always fall under some substance sortal concept S (the sortal dependency of individuation), and that the concept person entails that objects falling under it are three-dimensional. Concerning the second question, I differentiate between Criterianists, who maintain that it is possible to specify a non-circular and informative criterion for personal identity, and Non-Criterianists, who deny that such a specification is possible. I argue against Criterianist accounts of personal identity on the ground that they are either (i) circular, (ii) violate the intrinsicality of identity or (iii) do not adequately represent what we are essentially. I further criticise three Psychological Non-Criterianist accounts of personal identity on the ground that they wrongly assume that 'person' refers to mental entities. Instead I formulate the Revised Animal Attribute View where person is understood as a basic sortal concept which picks out a biological sort of enduring animals. In this, I claim that the real essence of a person is determined by the real essence of the kind of animal he is, without thereby denying that persons have a real essence as persons. / digitalisering@umu

Existem diferentes visões sobre a natureza de teorias científicas do mundo natural. A mais adotada atualmente é a visão semântica de teoria, na qual uma teoria é uma família de modelos unificada por proposições semânticas. A ecologia é uma ciência repleta de proposições amplamente aceitas, mas que sofre constantes críticas ao estado de desenvolvimento teórico. Essas críticas podem ser justificadas porque as proposições semânticas dentro dos subdomínios da ecologia nem sempre estão explícitos, o que passa a impressão de uma desunião teórica entre os seus subdomínios. Uma vertente da visão semântica de teoria, a visão pragmática, assume que as teorias científicas não precisam estar explicitadas em algum lugar para existir. Sob essa visão, mesmo quando as proposições da teoria sobre um fenômeno não foram elencadas explicitamente, cientistas continuam construindo e explorando modelos que possuem bases teóricas comuns. Essas bases teóricas seriam as proposições fundamentais da teoria desse fenômeno. Uma proposta de tentar identificar as proposições fundamentais da ecologia e seus subdomínios já foi feita. Entretanto, essa proposta foi feita sem método explícito, apenas consultando autoridades em cada subdomínio para elaborar, com base em suas percepções, quais são as proposições de determinado domínio. A tese apresentada nesse manuscrito é que existe um método sistematizado para identificar as proposições de um domínio e existem vantagens associadas a aplicação desse método. Esse método se baseia na análise dos modelos mais importantes dentro de um domínio específico e a identificação de proposições comuns que unificam esses modelos. O primeiro capítulo desse manuscrito é apresentação do método. Nesse capítulo apresentamos a contextualização teórica e justificativa do método, bem como o detalhamento dos passos metodológicos necessários para chegar às proposições do domínio a partir dos modelos. Nesse capítulo também discutimos as visões sobre ciência e teoria que são adotadas no método e depois apresentamos benefícios de usar o método para identificar proposições de uma teoria. Concluímos que o método pode se tornar uma ferramenta para análise estrutural de teorias, para análise histórica de teorias e ele funciona como uma ferramenta geral que pode unificar subdomínios diferentes da ecologia. O segundo capítulo é a demonstração da aplicabilidade do método. Nesse capítulo contextualizamos teoricamente a aplicação do método justificando a escolha do domínio no qual o método foi aplicado. Selecionamos a área de sucessão ecológica e seguimos os passos metodológicos indicados no capítulo 1. Escolhemos o domínio de sucessão ecológica, pois esse domínio é conceitualmente coeso e já existe uma proposta semântica explícita de teoria para esse domínio. Como primeiro teste do método, essas características tornam mais fáceis a aplicação e análise dos resultados que o método é capaz de retornar. Nesse capítulo comparamos as proposições feitas previamente por autoridades no domínio com os modelos identificados como os mais relevantes dentro do domínio conforme o método apresentado. A partir dessa comparação, concluímos que as proposições feitas pelas autoridades do domínio não refletem perfeitamente a atividade da comunidade. Uma das principais divergências entre o proposto pelas autoridades e o nosso resultado é que a comunidade parece estar usando com frequência mecanismos neutros para explicar sucessão, boa parte das proposições feitas pelas autoridades é inválida em modelos neutros. Depois da análise das proposições feitas pelas autoridades, elencamos as proposições mais adequadas para unificar o conjunto de modelos mais importantes do domínio de sucessão. Concluímos que o método é capaz de retornar um conjunto de modelos que podem ser usados para elaborar proposições de um domínio. Entretanto, os resultados de cada etapa podem ser analisados para entender a estrutura da teoria de um domínio. / There are different views about the nature of scientific theories of the natural world. Currently, the most adopted one is the semantic view of theory, in which a theory is a family of models unified by semantic propositions. Ecology is a science with many widely accepted propositions, but it suffers constant criticism about the state of its theoretical development. These criticisms might exist because the semantic propositions within the sub-domains of ecology are not always explicit, which gives the impression of a theoretical disunity within ecology. A strand of the semantic view of theory, the pragmatic view, assumes that scientific theories need not be made explicit to exist. Under this view, even when the propositions of the theory about a phenomenon are not explicitly listed, scientists continue to construct and explore models that have common theoretical bases. These theoretical bases are the fundamental propositions of the theory of this phenomenon. A proposal to try to identify the fundamental propositions of ecology and its sub-domains has already been made. However, these proposals were made without an explicit method that showed that the propositions in fact reflect the activity of scientists in the domain. The thesis presented here is that there is a systematized way to identify the propositions of a domain. The study that led to this thesis is the development and discussion of the detailed method to systematize the identifications of propositions based on the activity of the scientific community. This method is based on the analysis of the most important models within a specific domain and the identification of common propositions that unify these models. The first chapter of this manuscript is the presentation of the method. In this chapter we present the theoretical context and justification of the method, as well as details of the methodological steps necessary to arrive at the propositions of the domain from the models. In this chapter we also discuss the views on science and theory that are assumed in the method and then present the benefits of using the method to identify propositions of a theory. We conclude that the method can become a tool for structural analysis of theories, for historical analysis of theories and it functions as a general tool that can unify different sub-domains of ecology. The second chapter is the demonstration of the applicability of the method. In this chapter we contextualize theoretically the application of the method justifying the choice of the domain in which the method was applied. We select the domain of ecological succession and follow the methodological steps indicated in chapter 1. We chose the domain of ecological succession because this domain is a conceptually cohesive domain and there is already an explicit semantic proposal of theory for this domain. As a first test of the method, these characteristics make it easier to apply and analyze the results that the method can yield. In this chapter we compare the propositions previously made by authorities in the domain with the models identified as the most relevant within the domain according to the presented method. From this comparison we conclude that the propositions made by the authorities of the domain do not perfectly reflect the activity of the community. One of the main divergences between the propositions made by the authorities and our results is that the community is often using neutral mechanisms to explain succession; most of the propositions made by the authorities are invalid in neutral models. After analyzing the propositions made by the authorities, we have made propositions that are better suited to unify the set of the most important models of the domain of succession. We conclude that the method is able to return a set of models that can be used to elaborate propositions of a domain. However, the results of each step can be analyzed to understand the structure of a domain theory

<p>People use a variety of means to orient themselves towards the future. A more organised approach to handling the future known as "futures studies" is often used in a variety of contexts including long-term planning within large organisations. In the effort to enhance the quality of such studies, there have been arguments for better methods (which makes sense), but methods may not be the most important aspect in the production of futures studies. Greater theoretical awareness in the substantive questions upon which the study is based is more important. To that end, the intent of this dissertation is to infuse a keener awareness of fundamental assumptions in futures studies and contribute to increasing their quality.</p><p>One objective of the dissertation is to formulate a method or procedure to analyse the futures studies of large organisations, apply it to two empirical cases and thereafter analyse its strengths and weaknesses. The method I discuss and develop extensively in this work consists of an analytical framework that focuses on three aspects of each future study: its architecture, its relationship to a few of the key future issues of our time and its assumptions regarding our views on society, humanity and technology. A second objective is to systematically study future documents from two large organisations and attempt to clarify motives, orientation, methodology and distinguishing characteristics in their future processes. The cases I have chosen are the Swedish Armed Forces and the telecommunications company Ericsson, which were both in a period of transition around the mid 1990s.</p><p>The dissertation shows how the method has been used to bring to the fore and clarify central ideas in futures studies, identify ambiguities and fuzzy thinking and to show and expose more covert assumptions. The analysis also illustrates that certain aspects of the model have been observed in the empirical material, other ideas are found to a lesser extent and certain perspectives are entirely absent. The paper stresses that the model developed has both strengths and weaknesses, but the overall assessment is that it was well-balanced and maintains appropriate depth in relation to desired efficiency. The study shows that the analytical method is relevant and adequate to understand and describe the direction and content of futures studies and in so doing enhance their quality.</p>

This study is about the nature of persons and personal identity. It belongs to a tradition that maintains that in order to understand what it is to be a person we must clarify what personal identity consists in. In this pursuit, I differentiate between the problems (i) How do persons persist? and (ii) What facts, if any, does personal identity consist in? Concerning the first question, I argue that persons persist three-dimensionally (the endurance view), and not four-dimensionally (the perdurarne view), on the ground that objects must always fall under some substance sortal concept S (the sortal dependency of individuation), and that the concept person entails that objects falling under it are three-dimensional. Concerning the second question, I differentiate between Criterianists, who maintain that it is possible to specify a non-circular and informative criterion for personal identity, and Non-Criterianists, who deny that such a specification is possible. I argue against Criterianist accounts of personal identity on the ground that they are either (i) circular, (ii) violate the intrinsicality of identity or (iii) do not adequately represent what we are essentially. I further criticise three Psychological Non-Criterianist accounts of personal identity on the ground that they wrongly assume that 'person' refers to mental entities. Instead I formulate the Revised Animal Attribute View where person is understood as a basic sortal concept which picks out a biological sort of enduring animals. In this, I claim that the real essence of a person is determined by the real essence of the kind of animal he is, without thereby denying that persons have a real essence as persons. / digitalisering@umu

Existem diferentes visões sobre a natureza de teorias científicas do mundo natural. A mais adotada atualmente é a visão semântica de teoria, na qual uma teoria é uma família de modelos unificada por proposições semânticas. A ecologia é uma ciência repleta de proposições amplamente aceitas, mas que sofre constantes críticas ao estado de desenvolvimento teórico. Essas críticas podem ser justificadas porque as proposições semânticas dentro dos subdomínios da ecologia nem sempre estão explícitos, o que passa a impressão de uma desunião teórica entre os seus subdomínios. Uma vertente da visão semântica de teoria, a visão pragmática, assume que as teorias científicas não precisam estar explicitadas em algum lugar para existir. Sob essa visão, mesmo quando as proposições da teoria sobre um fenômeno não foram elencadas explicitamente, cientistas continuam construindo e explorando modelos que possuem bases teóricas comuns. Essas bases teóricas seriam as proposições fundamentais da teoria desse fenômeno. Uma proposta de tentar identificar as proposições fundamentais da ecologia e seus subdomínios já foi feita. Entretanto, essa proposta foi feita sem método explícito, apenas consultando autoridades em cada subdomínio para elaborar, com base em suas percepções, quais são as proposições de determinado domínio. A tese apresentada nesse manuscrito é que existe um método sistematizado para identificar as proposições de um domínio e existem vantagens associadas a aplicação desse método. Esse método se baseia na análise dos modelos mais importantes dentro de um domínio específico e a identificação de proposições comuns que unificam esses modelos. O primeiro capítulo desse manuscrito é apresentação do método. Nesse capítulo apresentamos a contextualização teórica e justificativa do método, bem como o detalhamento dos passos metodológicos necessários para chegar às proposições do domínio a partir dos modelos. Nesse capítulo também discutimos as visões sobre ciência e teoria que são adotadas no método e depois apresentamos benefícios de usar o método para identificar proposições de uma teoria. Concluímos que o método pode se tornar uma ferramenta para análise estrutural de teorias, para análise histórica de teorias e ele funciona como uma ferramenta geral que pode unificar subdomínios diferentes da ecologia. O segundo capítulo é a demonstração da aplicabilidade do método. Nesse capítulo contextualizamos teoricamente a aplicação do método justificando a escolha do domínio no qual o método foi aplicado. Selecionamos a área de sucessão ecológica e seguimos os passos metodológicos indicados no capítulo 1. Escolhemos o domínio de sucessão ecológica, pois esse domínio é conceitualmente coeso e já existe uma proposta semântica explícita de teoria para esse domínio. Como primeiro teste do método, essas características tornam mais fáceis a aplicação e análise dos resultados que o método é capaz de retornar. Nesse capítulo comparamos as proposições feitas previamente por autoridades no domínio com os modelos identificados como os mais relevantes dentro do domínio conforme o método apresentado. A partir dessa comparação, concluímos que as proposições feitas pelas autoridades do domínio não refletem perfeitamente a atividade da comunidade. Uma das principais divergências entre o proposto pelas autoridades e o nosso resultado é que a comunidade parece estar usando com frequência mecanismos neutros para explicar sucessão, boa parte das proposições feitas pelas autoridades é inválida em modelos neutros. Depois da análise das proposições feitas pelas autoridades, elencamos as proposições mais adequadas para unificar o conjunto de modelos mais importantes do domínio de sucessão. Concluímos que o método é capaz de retornar um conjunto de modelos que podem ser usados para elaborar proposições de um domínio. Entretanto, os resultados de cada etapa podem ser analisados para entender a estrutura da teoria de um domínio. / There are different views about the nature of scientific theories of the natural world. Currently, the most adopted one is the semantic view of theory, in which a theory is a family of models unified by semantic propositions. Ecology is a science with many widely accepted propositions, but it suffers constant criticism about the state of its theoretical development. These criticisms might exist because the semantic propositions within the sub-domains of ecology are not always explicit, which gives the impression of a theoretical disunity within ecology. A strand of the semantic view of theory, the pragmatic view, assumes that scientific theories need not be made explicit to exist. Under this view, even when the propositions of the theory about a phenomenon are not explicitly listed, scientists continue to construct and explore models that have common theoretical bases. These theoretical bases are the fundamental propositions of the theory of this phenomenon. A proposal to try to identify the fundamental propositions of ecology and its sub-domains has already been made. However, these proposals were made without an explicit method that showed that the propositions in fact reflect the activity of scientists in the domain. The thesis presented here is that there is a systematized way to identify the propositions of a domain. The study that led to this thesis is the development and discussion of the detailed method to systematize the identifications of propositions based on the activity of the scientific community. This method is based on the analysis of the most important models within a specific domain and the identification of common propositions that unify these models. The first chapter of this manuscript is the presentation of the method. In this chapter we present the theoretical context and justification of the method, as well as details of the methodological steps necessary to arrive at the propositions of the domain from the models. In this chapter we also discuss the views on science and theory that are assumed in the method and then present the benefits of using the method to identify propositions of a theory. We conclude that the method can become a tool for structural analysis of theories, for historical analysis of theories and it functions as a general tool that can unify different sub-domains of ecology. The second chapter is the demonstration of the applicability of the method. In this chapter we contextualize theoretically the application of the method justifying the choice of the domain in which the method was applied. We select the domain of ecological succession and follow the methodological steps indicated in chapter 1. We chose the domain of ecological succession because this domain is a conceptually cohesive domain and there is already an explicit semantic proposal of theory for this domain. As a first test of the method, these characteristics make it easier to apply and analyze the results that the method can yield. In this chapter we compare the propositions previously made by authorities in the domain with the models identified as the most relevant within the domain according to the presented method. From this comparison we conclude that the propositions made by the authorities of the domain do not perfectly reflect the activity of the community. One of the main divergences between the propositions made by the authorities and our results is that the community is often using neutral mechanisms to explain succession; most of the propositions made by the authorities are invalid in neutral models. After analyzing the propositions made by the authorities, we have made propositions that are better suited to unify the set of the most important models of the domain of succession. We conclude that the method is able to return a set of models that can be used to elaborate propositions of a domain. However, the results of each step can be analyzed to understand the structure of a domain theory

La numérisation 3D telle que pratiquée aujourd'hui repose essentiellement sur les connaissances de l'opérateur qui la réalise. La qualité des résultats reste très sensible à la procédure utilisée et par conséquent aux compétences de l'opérateur. Ainsi, la numérisation manuelle est très coûteuse en ressources humaines et matérielles et son résultat dépend fortement du niveau de technicité de l'opérateur. Les solutions de numérisation les plus avancées en milieu industriel sont basées sur une approche d'apprentissage nécessitant une adaptation manuelle pour chaque pièce. Ces systèmes sont donc semi-automatiques compte tenu de l'importance de la contribution humaine pour la planification des vues.Mon projet de thèse se focalise sur la définition d'un procédé de numérisation 3D automatique et intelligente. Ce procédé est présenté sous forme d'une séquence de processus qui sont la planification de vues, la planification de trajectoires, l'acquisition et les post-traitements des données acquises. L'originalité de notre démarche de numérisation est qu'elle est générique parce qu'elle n'est pas liée aux outils et méthodes utilisés pour la réalisation des tâches liées à chaque processus. Nous avons également développé trois méthodes de planification de vues pour la numérisation d'objets sans connaissance a priori de leurs formes. Ces méthodes garantissent une indépendance des résultats par rapport au savoir-faire de l'opérateur. L'originalité de ces approches est qu'elles sont applicables à tous types de scanners. Nous avons implanté ces méthodes sur une cellule de numérisation robotisée. Nos approches assurent une reconstruction progressive et intelligente d'un large panel d'objets de différentes classes de complexité en déplaçant efficacement le scanner / The manual 3D digitization process is expensive since it requires a highly trained technician who decides about the different views needed to acquire the object model. The quality of the final result strongly depends, in addition to the complexity of the object shape, on the selected viewpoints and thus on the human expertise. Nowadays, the most developed digitization strategies in industry are based on a teaching approach in which a human operator manually determines one set of poses for the ranging device. The main drawback of this methodology is the influence of the operator's expertise. Moreover, this technique does not fulfill the high level requirement of industrial applications which require reliable, repeatable, and fast programming routines.My thesis project focuses on the definition of a procedure for automatic and intelligent 3D digitization. This procedure is presented as a sequence of processes that are essentially the view planning, the motion planning, the acquisition and the post-processing of the acquired data. The advantage of our procedure is that it is generic since it is not performed for a specific scanning system. Moreover, it is not dependent on the methods used to perform the tasks associated with each elementary process. We also developed three view planning methods to generate a complete 3D model of unknown and complex objects that we implemented on a robotic cell. Our methods enable fast and complete 3D reconstruction while moving efficiently the scanner. Additionaly, our approaches are applicable to all kinds of range sensors.