This dissertation on the fourth duke of Bedford examines the political activities of a member of the House of Lords. It documents the activities of the members of the Pelham Administration, using Bedford's correspondence to provide an outline for the narrative. The aim is to provide a greater understanding of Bedford's political career, and also to illustrate the influence this individual had in determining ministerial policy. A discussion of Bedford's social connections leads into an overview of the events culminating in his inclusion in the Administration in 1745. Initially First Lord of the Admiralty, Bedford was promoted in 1748 to the office of Secretary of State for the Southern Department. In both offices, his concern was the promotion and protection of trade. He advocated the 'Country' Whig view that the protection of British merchants and their overseas markets by the navy was in the country‘s best interest. Bedford recognized the importance of securing and expanding American markets, and implemented measures, such as the proposed 'reduction' of Canada, to promote this aim. Bedford also lead the negotiations for the commercial treaty with Spain, signed at Madrid in 1750, that gave special trade status to Britain. Bedford sought to increase his political influence in various constituencies during the 1747 General Election. The local influence he wielded, however, did not enable him to carry through private turnpike legislation in Parliament. His legislation was defeated on 13 February 1750, at third reading, in an unusually high vote (154-208). Newcastle, whose relationship with Bedford had grown increasingly acrimonious, played a role in the defeat of this bill. The deterioration in this relationship contributed to Bedford's resignation from office on 14 June 1751.

Cette thèse est consacré à l'étude des T-variétés affines à l'aide de la présentation due à Altmann et Hausen. On s'intéresse plus particulièrement au cas des actions hyperboliques du groupe multiplicatif Gm. Dans une première partie, on étudie les espaces affines exotiques, c'est-à-dire des variétés affines lisses et contractiles, en supposant de plus qu'elles sont munies d'une action de Gm. En particulier, dans le cas de dimension 3, on réinterprète la construction des variétésde Koras-Russell en terme de diviseurs polyédraux, et on donne des constructions de variétés affines lisses et contractiles en dimension supérieure à 3.Dans une deuxième partie, on introduit la propriété pour une G-variété d'être G-uniformément rationnelle, c'est-à-dire que tout point de cette variété admet un voisinage ouvert G-stable, qui est isomorphe de manière equivariante à un ouvert G-invariant de l'espace affine. En particulier, on exhibera des Gm-variétés qui sont lisses et rationnelles mais qui ne sont pas Gm-uniformément rationnelle. / This thesis is devoted to the study of affine T-varieties using the Altmann-Hausen presentation. We are especially interested in the case of hyperbolic actions of the multiplicative group Gm. In the first part, exotic affine spaces are studied, that is, smooth contractible affine varieties, assuming in addition that they are endowed with a Gm-action. In particular, in the case of dimension 3, we reinterpret the construction of Koras-Russell threefolds in terms of polyhedral divisors andwe give constructions of smooth contractible affine varieties and in dimensionslarger than 3.In the second part we consider the property of G-uniform rationality for a G-variety. This means that every point of this variety there exists an open G-stable neighborhood, which is equivariantly somorphic to a G-stable open subset of the affine space. In particular we will exhibit Gm-varieties which are smooth and rational but not Gm-uniformly rational.

This thesis examines representations of sensation within modernist novels alongside contemporary philosophical debates over the concept of qualia. Concentrating on the work of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Percy Wyndham Lewis, and Samuel Beckett, it confronts a longstanding critical tradition that has tended to obscure or misunderstand the implications of arguments made by philosophers of mind in relation to literary descriptions of sensation. That the mind is a thing, and that modernist narrative fiction is particularly successful at representing that thing, has become a critical commonplace. In this thesis I argue that interpretations of modernism’s supposed ‘inward turn’ are founded on a mistaken notion of ‘cognitive realism’, a critical position endorsing the idea that it is both possible and desirable to describe the mind (conceived of as a stable and unchanging object) without loss through the development and judicial deployment of new literary techniques. The myth of the inward turn in its various incarnations – the psychologised modernism described by many literary critics in the 50s and 60s, and the neuromodernism subscribed to by many contemporary critics – is, I argue, largely the result of a set of inter-linked misconceptions which attend the cognitive realist paradigm. The notion of qualia is central to my thesis. Defined as the ineffable, irreducible, and subjective properties of conscious experience, qualia emerge concomitantly with modernism, developing out of G. E. Moore’s definition of ‘sense-data’ and Bertrand Russell’s category of ‘sensibilia’. Though still disputed within contemporary philosophy, qualia create huge problems for materialist theories of consciousness, threatening to undermine critical approaches to literature which contend that formal literary strategies can ever hope to transcend the limitations of symbolic language in conveying sensation. The ‘problem’ of qualia referred to in this thesis, therefore, is the problem the concept poses for symbolic descriptions (either mathematic, psychological, or literary) of mental states, especially when those descriptions make special claims (or are interpreted as making special claims) of mimetic veracity. The problem emerged within philosophy at precisely the point at which the representative claims of literature came under direct attack. This thesis argues, therefore, that it is a profoundly literary problem, and that the absence of ‘sensation’ from the written is simply a manifestation of the inherent limitations of language. A critical tendency to re-insert sensory experience into the process of reading – through phenomenological interpretations of modernism, or in contemporary ‘neuroaesthetic’ approaches to literature – thus point to a general anxiety that manifests itself most forcefully in relation to modernist fiction’s ability to ‘write’ sensation. This thesis employs the concept of qualia as a way of contextualising narratives of the mind – philosophical, literary and scientific – from the period. In doing so it seeks to historicise modernism’s ‘crisis of the senses’; locating this argument in a broader theoretical space and questioning the relevance (and novelty) of contemporary approaches to reading the senses in modernism.

The epistemological problem of unity and its development in the philosophy of Bertrand Russell is the main subject of this essay. The first chapter is devoted to naïve realism developed by G. E. Moore and adopted by early Russell. I explain the notion of objective unity of proposition. The second chapter concerns Russell's departure from naïve realism and the multiple relation of judgment which Wittgenstein's criticism rendered as fatally unable to handle the problem of synthetic unity. The breakdown of this theory led Russell to naturalism, which is the topic of the last chapter. I pay special attention to the regressive argument proposed in slightly different versions by Moore, L. Wittgenstein and G. Ryle. Keywords realism, neutral monism, behaviorism, unity, consciousness

The purpose of this work is to characterize the problem of semantic presuppositions generated by definite descriptions in subject-position in the light of a reassessment of the semantic framework of the Russell/Strawson controversy and analyze what would be the early and the later Wittgenstein's solution to such a problem. In the first part, the Russell/Strawson controversy is characterized. On the basis of Strawson's account, a general concept of semantic presupposition against which other theories may be tested is constructed. This allows the formulation of the problem above mentioned. Further analysis of the accounts involved reveals that Frege's concept of a 'semantic prerequisite' generated by definite descriptions in subject-position is an instance of the general concept. But Frege also held the view that simple proper names do not generate semantic prerequisites. The Fregean referential dualism suggests that the Russell/Strawson controversy, as far as only these authors' accounts are involved, is undecidable at the purely semantic level. This is the semantic framework against which Wittgenstein's philosophies are tested in the second part. The "Tractatus" adopts a modified version of the Russellian Theory of Descriptions. Even so, the Tractarian account seems to be ultimately equivalent to Russell's. Further analysis reveals that the doctrine of simple signs in isolation, but not its conjunction with the picture theory, is consistent with the general concept of semantic presupposition. The "Investigations " adopts the programmatic principle of searching for the use of the words. But the question about the 'referring use' of descriptions in a specific language-game is consistent with, and in the spirit of, the "Investigations". The framework of the question involves the appeal to the Kripkean notions of 'semantic referent' and 'speaker's referent'. The analysis of the referring use in the language-game of reporting an event reveals that the later Wittgenstein tends to reject the semantic concept of presupposition. Further analysis reveals that he would tend to reject Russell's Theory of Descriptions and most of the variants of the pragmatic concept. The analysis seems to confirm that the Russell/Strawson dispute is idle at the purely semantic level. Even so, the later Wittgenstein's account of language is such that it is possible to imagine some particular language-games in which relationships occur that bear some analogies with the one of semantic presupposition.

The completion of two school-based evaluation reports at a Catholic High School in the ACT highlighted the need for support structures both for evaluating staff and for the management of an evaluation report. The writer (a school principal) felt a need to review school-based evaluations in a more professional manner, and to ensure that evaluations were managed with greater support for the staff involved. In the absence of known Australian checklists, designed to review school-based evaluations, two recognised evaluation checklists, those of Russell and Maling-Keepes, are tested as instruments of review, by applying them to the two school evaluation reports. Four evaluation reviews are documented, in all. The main purposes of this research were: (1) to determine the merits of the completed evaluations by applying the checklists of Russell and Maling-Keepes, (2) to test the relevance of the evaluation checklists of Russell and Maling-Keepes as instruments of review at the school level, (3) in the light of this research, to be in a better position to recommend a) a suitable review method for use by Catholic School Principals, b) support structures, both at a system level and a school level, to assist the development of school-based evaluations.

Note de synthèse de l'HdR portant sur Russell et la question des fondements.

Le mémoire analyse l'évolution de la théorie russellienne de la quantité et de la grandeur, des premiers écrits de la période idéaliste, jusqu'au Principia Mathematica.

This rhetorical analysis of a contemporary and historical social movement, American conservatism, through a prominent intellectual figure, Russell Kirk, begins with a description of the author's work. Ideologies, arguments, and sentiments are considered as implicit rhetoric, where social relations are defined by persuasion, ideas, historical appeal, persona, and various invitations to shared assumptions. First, a descriptive historical context is the foundation to explore the beliefs, communicative strategies, and internal tensions of the conservative movement through the development of various identities and communities during its rise as a formidable political power. Second, an analysis of the author and the author's texts clarifies argumentative and stylistic choices, providing a framework for his communicative choices. The thesis of this discussion is that the discourses implicit and explicit in the author's writing and conduct of life were imaginative and literary products of what he termed "moral imagination." How this imagination developed, and its impact upon his persuasion, was a unique approach not only to an emergent intellectual tradition but also to the disciplines of history, fiction, policy, and audience. This work argues there were two components to Kirk's rhetoric of moral imagination. First, his choosing of historical subjects, in biographical sketch and literary content, was an indication of his own interest in rhetorical efficacy. Second, he attempted to live out the sort of life he claimed to value. I argue he taught observers by an ethos, an endeavor to live a rhetorical demonstration of what he genuinely believed was good. As demonstrated by what many who knew Kirk identified as an inner strength of character and conduct, his rhetorical behavior was motivated by a love for and a curiosity toward wonder and mystery. By an imaginative reading of history, his exemplars of more properly ordered sentiments of a moral order sought to build communities of associational, relational persons that found identity in relation to other persons. His ambition was to explore and communicate what it meant to be human - in limitation, in promise, and in the traditions and customs that provide a framework for "human" in a culture.

The purpose of this dissertation is to search the primitives of Axiomatic Set Theory in Leibnizian Philolosophy, nourishing, roughly, from Platonic idea of universal-particular distinction, Aristotelian syllogistic propositions of Organon-Categoria and Euclidean Methodology in Elements. The main focus of the dissertation intends to examine the analyticity of Leibnizian Metaphysics and the anologies between the subject-predicate relation in The Philosophy of Leibniz and Axiomatic Method in general and Set Theory in particular. In doing this, special emphasis will be ascribed to the notion of sets as to universality and/or nullness of a class, probable causes of paradoxes and in this context a critical analysis of Russell Paradox.