This thesis puts forward a formal theory of levels and algorithms to provide a foundation for those terms as they are used in much of cognitive science and computer science. Abstraction with respect to concreteness is distinguished from abstraction with respect to detail, resulting in three levels of concreteness and a large number of algorithmic levels, which are levels of detail and the primary focus of the theory. An algorithm or ideal machine is a set of sequences of states defining a particular level of detail. Rather than one fundamental ideal machine to describe the behaviour of a complex system, there are many possible ideal machines, extending Turing's approach to reflect the multiplicity of system descriptions required to express more than weak input-output equivalence of systems. Cognitive science is concerned with stronger equivalence; e.g., do two models go through the same states at some level of description? The state-based definition of algorithms serves as a basis for such strong equivalence and facilitates formal renditions of abstraction and implementation as relations between algorithms. It is possible to prove within the new framework whether or not one given algorithm is a valid implementation of another, or whether two unequal algorithms have a common abstraction, for example. Some implications of the theory are discussed, notably a characterisation of connectionist versus classical models.

The present study will be concerned with the reliability of the Shipley-Hartford Abstraction Scale as an instrument for diagnosis of schizophrenia and personality disorders.

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A dissertação visa alçar uma reflexão sobre a produção e contribuição crítica de Mário Pedrosa para a arte brasileira, como também identificar alguns de seus paradigmas artísticos que colaboraram para a consolidação de um arcabouço teórico para História da Arte Moderna, tanto no plano nacional, quanto internacional. Objetiva-se delinear a relação entre o que Pedrosa absorveu sobre as teorias gestálticas e exemplos de como ele as aplicou na tessitura de seu discurso crítico. Ao sedimentar o foco de análise no envolvimento do crítico brasileiro com o tema da psicologia da forma, propõe-se ressaltar as implicações estéticas de seu estudo pioneiro Da natureza Afetiva da Forma na Obra de Arte. Pretende-se, ainda, identificar a intersecção entre a psicologia da forma e a crítica de arte de Mário Pedrosa, propondo a influência destas teorias nos textos sobre a obra do artista americano Alexander Calder, artista considerado pelo crítico, como o emblema da estética abstrata construtiva. Busca-se verificar como as teses da psicologia da forma ofereceram ao crítico, subsídios conceituais para uma nova relação com as premissas constitutivas e cognitivas da estética abstrata. / The thesis aims at reflecting on the critical production and contribution of Mário Pedrosa to Brazilian art, as well as identifying some artistic paradigms, which contributed to the consolidation of a theoretical framework for the History of Modern Art, both at the national and international levels. The purpose here is to outline the relationship between what Pedrosa absorbed about Gestalt-based theories and examples of how he applied them in constructing his critical discourse. By focusing the analysis on the Brazilian critics engagement in the subject of the psychology of forms we propose to emphasize the aesthetic implications of his groundbreaking study Da natureza Afetiva da Forma na Obra de Arte (On the affective nature of forms in the work of art). We also intend to identify the intersection between the psychology of forms and Mario Pedrosas art criticism, pointing the influence of these theories on texts about American artist Alexander Calder, considered by the critic the symbol of constructive abstract aesthetics. We sought to verify how psychology theses on forms offered the critic conceptual material for a new relationship with the constitutive and cognitive premises of abstract aesthetics.

"Abstraction creates custom programming languages that facilitate programming for specific problem domains. It is traditionally partitioned according to a two-phase model of program evaluation, into syntactic abstraction enacted at translation time, and semantic abstraction enacted at run time. Abstractions pigeon-holed into one phase cannot interact freely with those in the other, since they are required to occur at logically distinct times. Fexprs are a Lisp device that subsumes the capabilities of syntactic abstraction, but is enacted at run-time, thus eliminating the phase barrier between abstractions. Lisps of recent decades have avoided fexprs because of semantic ill-behavedness that accompanied fexprs in the dynamically scoped Lisps of the 1960s and 70s. This dissertation contends that the severe difficulties attendant on fexprs in the past are not essential, and can be overcome by judicious coordination with other elements of language design. In particular, fexprs can form the basis for a simple, well-behaved Scheme-like language, subsuming traditional abstractions without a multi-phase model of evaluation. The thesis is supported by a new Scheme-like language called Kernel, created for this work, in which each Scheme-style procedure consists of a wrapper that induces evaluation of operands, around a fexpr that acts on the resulting arguments. This arrangement enables Kernel to use a simple direct style of selectively evaluating subexpressions, in place of most Lisps' indirect quasiquotation style of selectively suppressing subexpression evaluation. The semantics of Kernel are treated through a new family of formal calculi, introduced here, called vau calculi. Vau calculi use direct subexpression-evaluation style to extend lambda calculus, eliminating a long-standing incompatibility between lambda calculus and fexprs that would otherwise trivialize their equational theories. The impure vau calculi introduce non-functional binding constructs and unconventional forms of substitution. This strategy avoids a difficulty of Felleisen's lambda-v-CS calculus, which modeled impure control and state using a partially non-compatible reduction relation, and therefore only approximated the Church-Rosser and Plotkin's Correspondence Theorems. The strategy here is supported by an abstract class of Regular Substitutive Reduction Systems, generalizing Klop's Regular Combinatory Reduction Systems."

Data abstraction techniques are widely used in multiresolution visualization systems to reduce visual clutter and facilitate analysis from overview to detail. However, analysts are usually unaware of how well the abstracted data represent the original dataset, which can impact the reliability of results gleaned from the abstractions. In this thesis, we define three types of data abstraction quality measures for computing the degree to which the abstraction conveys the original dataset: the Histogram Difference Measure, the Nearest Neighbor Measure and Statistical Measure. They have been integrated within XmdvTool, a public-domain multiresolution visualization system for multivariate data analysis that supports sampling as well as clustering to simplify data. Several interactive operations are provided, including adjusting the data abstraction level, changing selected regions, and setting the acceptable data abstraction quality level. Conducting these operations, analysts can select an optimal data abstraction level. We did an evaluation to check how well the data abstraction measures conform to the data abstraction quality perceived by users. We adjusted the data abstraction measures based on the results of the evaluation. We also experimented on the measures with different distance methods and different computing mechanisms, in order to find the optimal variation from many variations of each type of measure. Finally, we developed two case studies to demonstrate how analysts can compare different abstraction methods using the measures to see how well relative data density and outliers are maintained, and then select an abstraction method that meets the requirement of their analytic tasks.

Haiti’s public image has long vacillated between extremes: from democratic beacon to shadow of insurrection; from space of racial uplift to pit of economic exploitation; from bearer of Enlightenment ideals to dark land of “voodoo.” Indeed the two taglines most commonly associated with Haiti are: “first black republic” and “poorest country in the Western hemisphere.” These opposing taglines fit within a critical paradigm that has long viewed Haiti in terms of example (as a site of universal emancipation and racial equality) and exception (or, in Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s memorable words, the notion that Haiti is “unnatural, erratic, and therefore unexplainable.”) This dissertation engages these two competing figures of Haitian exemplarity and Haitian exceptionalism in early 19th-century literatures of the black Americas. In doing so, I examine Haiti both as an imagined space and as a site of literary production whose products circulated in various and sometimes misleading translations. This network of what I call “translations of Haiti’ re-navigate, and mark with difference, traditional narratives of race and nation. My project reveals how the idea of Haiti flickered through many complex forms in the early 19th-century. Some of these forms fall into the rubric of exception/example but others do not: from sister in democracy, to vanguard of black internationalism, to potential site of exploitation, to occasion for domestic reflection. By nuancing the binary between example and exception, I question critical accounts that depict early representations of the first black republic as either symptomatic of white anxieties or an ideal site for the realization of black nationalist projects. These accounts, I argue, often overlook how national and racial categories failed to overlap; they occlude Haitian (and especially Kreyòl) literary production; and, most importantly, they ignore the complex transnational movements occasioned by this production. I argue that when we consider translation as a metaphor (for example, the notion of translation as an analogical model or heuristic) we must also consider translation as a practice with material consequences. I negotiate between Haiti’s powerful abstraction(s) and a material network of constantly circulating, translated and re-translated texts. These texts, I argue, provoked fears and anxieties, but also speculations, hopes, and visions amongst constantly changing constituents of groups that may or may not be usefully labeled (for example, free U.S. blacks; mulâtres; noirs; U.S. northerners; etc.) Using this shifting international stage as a point of departure, “Translated Subjects” takes Haitian cultural production seriously – that is to say, as more than a convenient metaphor – to reveal new channels of literary exchange.

Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke et Blinky Palermo apparaissent aujourd’hui comme des figures majeures de l’histoire de l’art contemporain allemand. Richter est unanimement reconnu pour l’étendue de sa pratique picturale qui, depuis le début des années soixante, explore tous les registres de la figurabilité à travers l’usage de la photographie, brisant les limites traditionnelles du médium et du style. Polke, bien qu’encore trop méconnu en France, bénéficie de nombreuses expositions dans le monde depuis la fin des années soixante. Sa disparition, en 2010, a suscité de la part de la critique un intérêt nouveau. A la monadologie de Polke, incarnée par la trame sérigraphique au crible de laquelle est passée la vie toute entière, répond la géométrie romantique d’un peintre presque totalement ignoré du public français : Blinky Palermo. Disparu prématurément en 1977, sa popularité - notamment en Allemagne et Etats-Unis – ne cesse de croître depuis le milieu des années soixante-dix. Qu’en est-il précisément de ces trois destins qui, dans les couloirs de l’école d’art de Düsseldorf en 1961 et le voisinage d’une figure chamanique - celle de Joseph Beuys – se sont un jour croisés ? Richter, Polke et Palermo ont d’abord été ces « junge Männer » en quête d’éternité qu’en 1982 chantait Alain Bashung dans son album Play Blessures. Le socle de notre recherche coïncide donc avec les questionnements d’une génération marquée par la culpabilité, le besoin de nouveaux horizons, la conscience de la catastrophe et l’ambiguïté du modèle américain. Richter, Polke et Palermo représentent à eux-seuls un pan entier de l’histoire et de l’art allemands. / Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Blinky Palermo are emerging, since the middle of the sixties, as major artists in the context of German contemporary art. Richter is today widely celebrated for the breadth of his pictorial practice which, since the early sixties, explores all registers of painting through the use of photography, breaking the traditional boundaries of the medium and style. Polke, although still too little known in France, has many exhibitions around the world since the late sixties. His death in 2010 sparked criticism from a new interest. Polke’s Monadology, embodied by the reproduction of the Ben-Day Dots printing process, encounters the Euclidean geometry of a romantic painter almost totally ignored by the French public : Blinky Palermo. Died prematurely in 1977, his popularity - especially in Germany and the United States - is constantly growing since the mid-seventies. What precisely connects these three painters, in the neighborhood of the shamanic personality of Joseph Beuys? That is the question we solve. Richter, Polke and Palermo were first these "junge Männer" in search of eternity Alain Bashung in 1982 sang in his album Play Blessures. The rhythm of our research is given by the history of a generation marked by guilt, the need for new horizons, awareness of the disaster and the ambiguity of the American model. Richter, Polke and Palermo are on their own an entire part of history and German art.

Submitted by Rosivalda Pereira (mrs.pereira@ufma.br) on 2017-06-27T20:44:45Z No. of bitstreams: 1 IvandroCoelho.pdf: 5627872 bytes, checksum: e93f6ffd0eff1537d950c73ea8443659 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-27T20:44:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 IvandroCoelho.pdf: 5627872 bytes, checksum: e93f6ffd0eff1537d950c73ea8443659 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-11-25 / This study aims to make a symbolic interpretation of the representations in the "bumba meu boi" songs of the singer, born in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, Donaldo Alves. This analysis is made considering the four natural elements: water, air, earth and fire. Its theoretical fundament is based on the Abstraction Theory perspectives of Gaston Bachelard and Gilbert Duran. The study attempts to understand the recurrent symbols in Donato Alves' work as well as its contributions to a humanizing education. It is a research anchored to a comprehensive hermeneutic view and one that renews the sense, as it deals with the plysemic symbols represented in human creations. Therefore, this study is based on a holistic paradigm which values the unity of knowledge, of science and of men, as well as considers the complexity of the subject, understanding these abstractions as constituting and organizing elements of society. Regarding data collection, this study considers the reading/listening of Donato Alves' songs and other works connected to the subject as well as the experience of a workshop at CE Raimundo Araújo in Chapadinha-MA. A qualitatitive approach was chosen for the research, in a comprehensive perspective, which contemplates a selection of texts and literary representations analysed in their contexts to provide a more accurate interpretation of the phenomenon in case. It is concluded that folk literature and abstraction, once experienced at school through literary symbols, allow students (reader/listener) to develop their imagination, creativity and emotions, giving them tools to understand themselves and others. This process accurs through dialogue, in a sensitive way, contributing thus to a humanizing education. / Este estudo busca realizar uma leitura simbólica das imagens presentes nas toadas de bumba meu boi do cantador maranhense Donato Alves, a partir dos quatro elementos materiais água, ar, terra e fogo. Como base teórica, recorre-se à Teoria do Imaginário sob as perspectivas de Gaston Bachelard e Gilbert Durand, no intuito de apreender as imagens recorrentes nas obras de Donato Alves, bem como sua contribuição para uma educação humanizadora. Trata-se de um estudo ancorado numa visão hermenêutica compreensiva e instauradora de sentidos, uma vez que trabalha com as polissemias simbólicas frutos das criações humanas. Para tanto, fundamenta-se no paradigma holonômico, que valoriza a unificação do conhecimento, da ciência e do homem, bem como considera a complexidade do sujeito, compreendendo o imaginário como fator organizador e instituinte da sociedade. Para a coleta de dados, optou-se pela leitura/escuta das toadas de Donato Alves, bem como a consulta a trabalhos relacionados ao tema e, ainda, a aplicação de uma oficina na escola CE Raimundo Araújo, em Chapadinha-MA. Quanto à natureza da pesquisa, escolheu-se a abordagem qualitativa, dentro da perspectiva compreensiva, que contempla o conjunto formado por texto e imagem literária analisados em seu contexto, de forma a proporcionar uma interpretação mais aproximada do fenômeno estudado. Constatou-se que a literatura popular e o imaginário, ao serem vivenciados na escola por meio das imagens literárias, permitem que o aluno (leitor/ouvinte) desenvolva a imaginação, a criatividade e a emoção, possibilitando-lhe compreender a si mesmo e ao outro. Processo que ocorre de forma sensível e dialógica, contribuindo assim para uma educação humanizadora.