What is the relationship between judging something as good and being motivated to acton this judgment? Motivational internalism is the thesis that there is a necessaryconnection between moral judgments and motivation. Externalists typically believe that ajudgment-independent desire is needed for the moral judgment to be motivating. Tobridge the gap between internalism and externalism, a few philosophers have appealed totheories of identification-based moral judgments. This implies that although moraljudgments may not be necessarily motivating in general, it could be possible to define acertain kind of identification-based moral judgment that is necessarily motivating. HereinI will examine the role identification plays for moral motivation. I will first analyse anargument that uses an identification-incompatible moral judgment to show thatinternalism is false. I will argue that this argument is unconvincing and that identificationdoes not preclude identification-incompatible moral judgments from being motivating.The identification-based argument hence does not support that internalism is false.Second, I will argue that identification can provide the motivational force needed to makecertain identity-based moral judgments necessarily motivating. This identification-basedaccount does however, I will argue, not support internalism. Despite presenting a kind ofmoral judgment that is necessarily motivating, it is an externalist account of theconnection between moral judgments and motivation since a judgment-independentdesire is a necessary source of its motivational force.

"We develop a selfconsistent solution of the Schroedinger and Poisson equations in semiconductor heterostructures with arbitrary doping profiles and layer geometries. An algorithm for this nonlinear problem is presented in a multiband k.P framework for the electronic band structure using the finite element method. The discretized functional integrals associated with the Schroedinger and Poisson equations are used in a variational approach. The finite element formulation allows us to evaluate functional derivatives needed to linearize Poisson’s equation in a natural manner. Illustrative examples are presented using a number of heterostructures including single quantum wells, an asymmetric double quantum well, p-i-n-i superlattices and trilayer superlattices."

Remembrance of one's personal past and the development of false memories have recently received intense public scrutiny. Based upon self-schema (Markus, 1977) and self-verification (Swann, 1987) theories, two studies were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that a self-schema guides cognitive processing of self-relevant information and thereby influences the construction of a memory that includes false information, particularly more so if this information is self-schema consistent than inconsistent. Study 2 also investigated the hypothesis that the cognitive processing goal of understanding a negative outcome (motivated cognition) would interact with self-consistent expectations to enhance the likelihood that a false memory would be created. Self-schematic Type A and Type B individuals (only self-schematic Type A individuals participated in Study 2) participated in a team problem solving task (the to-be-remembered event) and returned a week later for a "questionnaire" session during which a narrative was read that contained self-consistent or self-discrepant false information. In both studies, chi-square analyses showed participants given self-consistent false information were more likely to report this information on a recall and a recognition test than were participants given self-discrepant false information. Study 2 included team performance feedback (failure or neutral), which was presented just before participants read the narrative containing the false information. The purpose of this procedure was to assess the moderating effect of motivated cognitive processes on the acceptance of self-consistent false information on memory. A loglinear analysis provided confirmation for the expected interaction. The following pattern was obtained for false recall and false self-description (description of team problem solving behavior using the false information trait adjectives): Consistent/failure > Consistent/neutral > Discrepant/neutral = Discrepant/failure. Unexpectedly, this pattern was not obtained on the recognition test data. These findings expand current understanding of processes that contribute to the production of a false memory and extend the traditional, post event false information paradigm. The results are discussed in the context of the false memory debate and future research directions are noted. / Ph. D.

No description available.

Title: Billiard time machine Author: Jindřich Dolanský Department: Institute of Theoretical Physics Supervisor: doc. RNDr. Jiří Langer, CSc. Supervisor's e-mail address: Jiri.Langer@mff.cuni.cz Abstract: In this work we investigate a simple interacting system of an elastic particle in the non-relativistic spacetime with a nontrivial causal structure realized by a worm- hole with a time shift. We require that standard local physical laws hold, and search for their globally consistent solutions, i.e, we assume the validity of the principle of self-consistency. If there were nontrivial set of initial conditions which would violate this principle, the system would be logically inconsistent. We show that the investigated system is not inconsistent in this sense, i.e., that all standard initial conditions have a globally consistent evolution. Even for the so called dangerous initial conditions which threaten to result into the paradoxical situation a consistent solution exists. In this case, the paradoxical collision-free trajectory is superseded by a special consistent self-colliding trajectory. Moreover, we demonstrate that more than one globally consistent evolution exists for a wide class of initial conditions. Thus, the evolution of the described system is not unique due to the nontrivial causal structure...