Multiplicity is a key challenge and opportunity of world politics, yet scholars continue to struggle to do it justice. One way of reducing the challenge multiple times and spaces present us with has been to organise them allochronically, to align spatial difference in temporal sequence. The effect is a story where others are not different, they are just behind. Scholars have criticised this thinking as it appears in “Western thought”. In recent years, suggestions have emerged that Chinese thought may offer an alternative that escapes allochronic thinking, most notably through the foreign policy-driven concept “harmonious world”. Scholars have studied this term with the aim of finding out its true meaning. This thesis asks instead what “harmony” – and more specifically “harmonious world” – does when it is deployed in contemporary China. It traces the concept across several contexts: the policy documents and speeches that launched it as an official term; the academic literatures that asked what a harmonious world might look like; the propaganda at Expo 2010 Shanghai China that aimed to illustrate it; and the online spoofing culture egao that was used to criticise, resist and avoid “harmonisation”.The key claim of this thesis is that “harmonious world”, as articulated in the contexts examined here, has not taken place, is not taking place and will not take place. Ways of thinking about time, space and multiplicity in China’s relation to the world, and particularly “harmonious world”, repeat the allochronising logic recognisable from “Western” discourses, which disallows the openness of the future and reduces the possibilities of harmony and of the political. As an effect of its excessive proliferation harmony disappears as an imagined metaphysical possibility . The harmonious system is not based on co-operation or non co-operation, but works according to what this thesis calls an onco-operative logic: the quasi-suicidal logic of cancer and the (auto)immune. Ultimately, the aim and most important contribution of this thesis is to bring the onco-operative uncertainty of the political back into the harmonious world concept in order to elucidate the negotiation of danger and necessity of multiplicity.

Novel forms of brain-inspired programming models related to novel computer architecture are required to both understand the mysteries of intelligence as well as break barriers in computational complexity, and computer parallelism. Artificial Intelligence is focused on developing complex programs based on abstract, statistical prediction engines that require large datasets, vast amounts of computational power, and unbounded computation time. By contrast, the brain utilizes relatively few experiences to make decisions in unpredictable, time-constrained situations while utilizing relatively small amounts of physical computational space and power with high degrees of complexity and parallelism. We observe that intelligence requires the accommodation of ambiguity, conflict, and paradox. From a structural perspective, this means the same set of inputs leads to conflicting results that are likely produced in isolated regions of the brain that function independently until an answer must be chosen. We further observe that, unlike computer programs, brains constantly interact with the physical world where external constraints force the selection of the best available response in time-quality trade-offs ranging from fight-or-flight to deep thinking. For example, when intelligent beings are presented with a set of inputs, those inputs can be processed with different levels of thinking, utilizing heterogeneous algorithms to produce answers dependent upon the time available to process them. We introduce the Troop meta-approach, which is a novel meta computer architecture and programming. Experiments demonstrate our approach in modeling conflict when the same set of inputs are heterogeneously processed independently using maze solving and ordered search in real-world environments with unpredictable, random time constraints. Across one hundred trials, on average, the Troop solution solves mazes almost six times faster than the only other solution, which does not accommodate conflict but can always produce a result when required. Two other experiments based on ordered search show that, on average, the Troop solution returns a position that is over twice as accurate as the other solutions which do not accommodate conflict but always produce a result when required. This work lays the foundation for more research in algorithms that utilize time-accuracy trade-offs consistent with our approach. / This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2204780. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. / Master of Science / New types of brain-inspired computer architectures and programming models are needed to break barriers that hinder traditional methods in computer parallelism as well as to understand better the phenomenon by which intelligence emerges from the structure of the human brain. Traditional research in the field of Artificial Intelligence is focused on developing complex programs based on simulating low-level models of the brain such as artificial neural networks. The most advanced of these methods are processed on large supercomputers that use vast amounts of power and have unlimited amounts of time to process a task producing a single result. By contrast, the human brain is relatively small and uses very little power. Furthermore, it can use relatively few experiences to make very quick and inaccurate but necessary decisions to survive in unpredictable environments. But the brain can produce many different and conflicting decisions to the same problem. Given more time, the human brain can use higher levels of thinking located in different parts of the brain to produce better decisions. Thus, we observe that intelligence requires the ability to handle conflicting answers to the same problem. From a highlevel perspective, this means different and independent structures of the brain can simultaneously produce conflicting answers that solve the same problem. We further observe that, unlike traditional computer programs, the brain constantly interacts with the physical world, where different circumstances within the environment force the best available decision to be carried out. Based on these observations, this research introduces novel approaches that we collectively reference as the Troop meta-approach to develop computer architectures that solve real-world problems, such as maze solving. This research demonstrates the approaches by first introducing scenarios inspired by humans solving problems in environments where unforeseeable events occur that force decisions to be made that are not the most accurate but necessary not to fail the overall objective. For example, military and law enforcement trainees use square mazes to prepare for unpredictable environments. When a threat presents itself, if a soldier or officer does not react to a circumstance in time, their failure may be fatal. To demonstrate that our approaches are feasible, this research then presents three experiments based on the problems of the scenarios and uses the Troop meta-approach to solve each one. Across three experiments, on average, the computer architectures and related algorithms developed using the Troop meta-approach solve mazes or search databases while responding to unpredictable real-world events faster or more accurately than traditional architectures and algorithm pairs that do not handle simultaneous decisions that conflict. This work lays the foundation for more research in methods and computer architectures that utilize multiple conflicting decisions.

La réduction de toute temporalité préalable à la conscience immanente du temps est le point de départ de la phénoménologie du temps. La question à laquelle il s’agit de répondre est de savoir (1) s’il est possible d’accomplir la réduction phénoménologique de toute temporalité préexistante, et (2) par ailleurs, quelles sont les conséquences à tirer de la possibilité ou de l’impossibilité de cette réduction pour l’expérience du temps et pour la constitution du temps objectif. Dans notre recherche nous avons thématisé la question du statut phénoménologie du temps du monde en tant que problème limite de la phénoménologie en nous appuyant, d’une part, sur les manuscrits de Husserl afin d’argumenter en faveur de la possibilité de la réduction phénoménologique et, d’autre part, sur la phénoménologie du temps de Merleau-Ponty et Blumenberg qui problématisent la possibilité de l’accomplissement de la réduction phénoménologique du temps dans leur approche critique à la phénoménologie transcendantale. Tandis que Husserl met entre parenthèses le temps du monde et réduit le temps donné à l'expérience subjective du temps, Merleau-Ponty et Blumenberg insistent quant à eux sur la pré-donation d'un temps général ainsi que sur sa manifestation comme une perturbation dans la vie du sujet. Le passé naturel du corps (tel qu’évoqué par Merleau-Ponty) et la facticité du temps du monde (telle qu’évoquée par Blumenberg) sont les aspects indéniables de l'expérience du temps qui restent négligés dans l’approche de la phénoménologie du temps de Husserl. L’apparition du temps n'est pas l'identification continue et homogène du flux de la conscience absolue avec elle-même mais un mouvement discontinu. / The reduction of any pre-given form of temporality to the immanent time-consciousness is the starting point of the phenomenology of time. The questions to be answered are (1) whether it is possible to accomplish this phenomenological reduction, and (2) what are the consequences of the possibility or the impossibility of this reduction for the experience of time and for the phenomenological constitution of objective time. In our research we have thematized the phenomenological status of the world-time as a limit problem of phenomenology by relying on Husserl manuscripts in order to argue in favor of the possibility of the phenomenological reduction, and on the phenomenology of time of Merleau-Ponty and Blumenberg who problematize the possibility of the accomplishment of the phenomenological reduction of time in their critical approach to the transcendental phenomenology. While Husserl brackets the world-time and reduces the given time to the subjective experience of time, Merleau-Ponty and Blumenberg insist on the pre-donation of a general time as well as on its manifestation as a perturbation in the life of the subject. The natural past of the body (Merleau-Ponty) and the facticity of world-time (Blumenberg) are the undeniable aspects of the time-experience, which remain neglected in Husserl’s approach to the phenomenology of time. The time-appearance is not the continuous and homogeneous identification of the flow of absolute consciousness with itself, but a discontinuous movement.