The thesis focuses on gender in primary school and the aim was to study how girls and boys construct their subjectivities in accordance with current gender discourses and how they take up those discourses in school practices. Special attention has been paid to the students' fluid subjectivities. The theoretical frameworks used are Bronwyn Davies' postructural subjectivity theory, Robert W Connells' structural concepts and cultural-sociological research studies concerning multicultural identity. The study was carried out at two schools, one ethnically homogeneous and one ethnically heterogeneous, in six classes encompassing years 0-2 and 5-6. It is ethnographic in nature and includes classroom observations, diaries, biographies, drawings, interviews with students and schoolteachers/headteachers and videotaping on a restricted scale. Data was collected over a period of approximately two school years. The results consist of local gender discourses emanating from the datamaterial and also of poststructural analyses of protocols from lessons etc. Five feminine and six masculine gender discourses, named student types, have been diagnosed: Sporty girl, Barbie, Feminist, Academic girl and Motherly girl and Macho boy, Honourable boy, Academic, Joker, Gentle boy and Ken. These student types are abstract discursive constructions developed from positions the student took up in a more or less repetitive way. They apperar in all classes but with varying frequency due to the influence of the schools' interest profile, leading teachers or leading students. Certain gender discourses are influenced by commercial trends in society, others are characterized by reactions towards the school's academic discourses. Students from working class backgrounds often take up positions as Macho boy or Sporty girl while middle class students dominate the type Academic boy/girl. Otherwise the positions are independent of social class. Immigrant students take up the most common discourses, probably an effect of ambitions to normalise to the majority culture. The analysis reveals that a dualistic and hierarchical gender structure, with male superiority was developed in all school classes and also among the boys in their own gendergroups, and among the girls but in a lesser degree. Teachers' discourses, education strategies, group size and the student's ages influence the gender order during lessons but less so during breaks. Both girls and boys, and some teachers, shift positions and even cross gender boundaries and the younger students (year 0-2) are more flexiable as also are the girls. This is considered to provide openings for changes in gender patterns. Consistently taking up equality discourse in practice influenced the gender order in one class. Some boys showed multiple subjectivities free from desire for power and some girls also wanted to break the gender barrier. Ideas about innate equalities between the genders were common and these circumstances might provide good resources for work aimed at changing gender structures. Macho and Barbie discourses ought to be questioned from the perspective of power. The results also show that cultural meetings in the classroom are characterised by the dominance of the majority culture. Immigrant students in accordance with the curriculum should experience integration taking place from two directions, enriching and strengthing their subjectivity process and also that of their fellow students. / digitalisering@umu

This thesis presents and evaluates David Chalmers argument that the existence of phenomenal conscious experience constitutes a permanent barrier to the reductive aspirations of a purely materialistic neuroscience. My aim is to defend the possibility of a reductive explanation of consciousness, and argue that continued research in neuroscience and neurophysiology can result in a successful materialistic or reductive solution to the hard problem of consciousness. My argument against Chalmers is two-fold. First, I challenge Chalmers claim that consciousness does not logically supervene on the physical. And second, I argue that his conceivability argument is implausible.

Nutida forskning har beskrivit medvetandet som förkroppsligat, i motsats till dualismen inom västerländsk kultur som nedvärderat kroppen och separerat den från själen. Genom fokuserade intervjuer med terapeuter från olika inriktningar har tydligt integrativa perspektiv på kropp och själ, samt en mängd förhållningssätt till klientens och terapeutens egen kropp framträtt. Kroppen har beskrivits som sanningsbärare och rik informationskälla. Terapeutens uppgift att facilitera affektivt laddade upplevelser har framlyfts, liksom vikten av ett öppet förhållningssätt till beröring och benämnandets centrala roll som brygga mellan kropp och själ. En relationell modell byggd på kroppslig interaktion för hur terapeuter kan hjälpa klienter att närma sig andra och sig själva har utformats. Uppsatsen ger stöd för att terapiarbete och utbildning kan utvecklas genom medvetna och aktiva förhållningssätt till kroppen.

This thesis presents and evaluates David Chalmers argument that the existence of phenomenal conscious experience constitutes a permanent barrier to the reductive aspirations of a purely materialistic neuroscience. My aim is to defend the possibility of a reductive explanation of consciousness, and argue that continued research in neuroscience and neurophysiology can result in a successful materialistic or reductive solution to the hard problem of consciousness. My argument against Chalmers is two-fold. First, I challenge Chalmers claim that consciousness does not logically supervene on the physical. And second, I argue that his conceivability argument is implausible.

No description available.

As the population of the earth expands the natural world shrinks in order to give space to our growing population. This is a problem since humans have a big part in the destruction of natural habitats. In Gretel Ehrlich’s The Solace of Open Spaces we find a close interaction between human culture and nature. The Solace of Open Spaces can be categorized as creative non fiction, and with this is mind I intend to employ a theoretical approach called ecocriticism when analyzing The Solace of Open Spaces. The following essay will examine how the narrator of The Solace of Open Spaces has depicted the relation between nature and culture. The study will be conducted by a close reading of The Solace of Open Spaces. Other than the close reading a series of important articles and websites have been consulted for further information regarding certain keywords and concepts. Important keywords which are found throughout the essay are: anthropocentrism, cowboy, culture, dualism, nature and sheepherder. My initial theory is that even though it might not be intended, a nature and culture dualism is present in The Solace of Open Spaces. I base the assumption on my belief that all humans objectify nature and see nature as a possession. The aim of the essay is to establish whether there is a nature and culture dualism present in The Solace of Open Spaces.

Abstract Taiwan's social security has implemented at the institutional for a while. The development of social security shows the face of diversity in each era. There is diverse social security law can be described with impressive results, but we also have to reflect on another issue: What is Taiwan's social security law the common purpose? Every laws and regulations both have a different development process, in the whole social security should have their roles, if the social security policies and regulations have a lack in the principle of system, the government which in the administrative system may be faces obstacles. Particularly, after the democratization of political system in Taiwan, the development of social security measures cannot prevent the intrusion of politics, vote often become the means of achieving the people's welfare and security, and just in the implementation of policies on social security payments of uncertainty measures, it is unable to satisfy what people's need essentially. At this point, the state is difficult to achieve the protection of people's right and equalize opportunity and remove social conflicts, the state power is hard to protect the right of freedoms and vulnerable function, it caused the implementation of social justice by the state as the legitimate role become increasingly disordered. View of diverse of the development of Taiwan's social security law, the legal system reflects the purpose of social security to promote harmony development of society which has become an important starting point. Thus, this study is about the status of social security law, the legal aspects of evidence which in our Constitution, "Social Security" in the normative sense, that is what we want to create? The concept of this country endowed with a local social security of the explanation? Or should we look for the legal science for another closer theory of state and society relations outside positive law, in order to facilitate the establishment of law system. And another study is from the philosophy of law, analysis Lorenz von Stein's book of social theory, which is German scholar of public law, and the book of John Rawls theory of justice, which is American political scientist. And then look for the social constitution real meaning behind the words to construct a more complete system of social security law. Attempt to think through the social sciences, the social security law find a common language, and to answer how to construct a Taiwanese legal system of social security, people's social life will have a more harmonious development of justice in order.

<p>As the population of the earth expands the natural world shrinks in order to give space to our growing population. This is a problem since humans have a big part in the destruction of natural habitats. In Gretel Ehrlich’s The Solace of Open Spaces we find a close interaction between human culture and nature. The Solace of Open Spaces can be categorized as creative non fiction, and with this is mind I intend to employ a theoretical approach called ecocriticism when analyzing The Solace of Open Spaces. The following essay will examine how the narrator of The Solace of Open Spaces has depicted the relation between nature and culture. The study will be conducted by a close reading of The Solace of Open Spaces. Other than the close reading a series of important articles and websites have been consulted for further information regarding certain keywords and concepts. Important keywords which are found throughout the essay are: anthropocentrism, cowboy, culture, dualism, nature and sheepherder. My initial theory is that even though it might not be intended, a nature and culture dualism is present in The Solace of Open Spaces. I base the assumption on my belief that all humans objectify nature and see nature as a possession. The aim of the essay is to establish whether there is a nature and culture dualism present in The Solace of Open Spaces.</p>

This thesis explores the ways in which key holistic thinkers over the course of the last three hundred years have articulated unity between the human subject and objective world. I borrow the term “holism” from the philosopher J. C. Smuts, who coined it in his 1936 work Holism and Evolution, and I use it here in an expanded sense that includes all thinkers in the Western tradition who, like Smuts, have been preoccupied with the question of unity. Although the nature of cosmic unity and the individual’s place within it have been questions for philosophical debate since the classical Greeks of the sixth and fifth centuries BC, from the seventeenth century onwards these questions became largely associated with a series of thinkers who sought to overcome the dualistic separation of subject and object introduced by Galileo, Descartes and others in the mechanistic philosophical tradition of Western thought. My consideration of the holistic tradition includes selected writings by Leibniz, Hegel, Whitehead and Arne Naess, cofounder and key communicator of the deep ecology movement. In my discussion of these authors I observe an emerging pattern that has gradually carried holistic thought away from its traditional dependence on an absolute universal Being as the origin of unity in the world, towards an increasing emphasis on Becoming as the origin of Being. This pattern is confirmed by my broad analyses of Renaissance philosophy and of the Counter-Enlightenment thinkers Vico, Hamann and Herder. It is further confirmed by Naess’ vision of the deep ecology movement, which emphasizes plurality and diversity in the struggle to create more ecologically sustainable forms of human living. The pattern is challenged, however, by my discussions of Heraclitus and of the deep ecology movement, which both exhibit features that also contradict the existence of a definite linear progression “from Being to Becoming.” Insofar as the deep ecology movement recognizes the validity of a broad diversity of philosophical views and premises as grounds for ecological action and decision-making, it is part of a larger movement in contemporary societies that is helping create an open space wherein all perspectives are appreciated as valuable in their own right. This movement seeks to challenge all absolute and hegemonic claims to truth (which in the early twentieth century gave rise to fascism and in our present day continue to inform our views of nature and the self), and, as I suggest, is also contributing to the emergence of an apophatic perspective in our own day that is a precondition for change. / Graduate / 0422 / 0585 / jdesser@uvic.ca

This dissertation makes progress on the mind-body problem by examining certain key features of epistemic defeasibility, introspection, peer disagreement, and philosophical methodology. In the standard thought experiments, dualism strikes many of us as true. And absent defeaters, we should believe what strikes us as true. In the first three chapters, I discuss a variety of proposed defeaters—undercutters, rebutters, and peer disagreement—for the seeming truth of dualism, arguing that not one is successful. In the fourth chapter, I develop and defend a novel argument from the indefeasibility of certain introspective beliefs for the conclusion that persons are not complex objects like brains or bodies. This argument reveals the non-mechanistic nature of introspection. / text