This diploma thesis is concerned with the question of the right conceptual approach towards consciousness. It opens up with the thesis that the crucial characteristic of consciousness - its subjective aspect - is profoundly elusive. To understand the nature of this elusiveness we get a loose inspiration from Karl Jaspers (of the continental tradition) and his idea of "subject-object dichotomy" whose main point is a realisation that the conscious subject is in principle unobjectifiable and can never be properly grasped by objectifying thinking. This main idea is then applied to various modern theories of consciousness (coming from the analytical tradition) in order to explore and demonstrate to what extend each of the theories misses or acknowledges the specific irreducibility of consciousness to objectively describable phenomena. Thus we observe that J. J. C. Smart omits subjectivity from his identity theory altogether since he understands reality as objectively graspable in all its aspects. Colin McGinn comes with an interesting explanation of our problems with grasping consciousness as part of the physical world and asserts that we are "cognitively closed" with respect to the solution of the mind-body problem. However, he concludes that a possible solution delivered in objectifying terms exists...

Cette thèse porte sur les différents facteurs impliqués dans le traitement des relatives, notamment le traitement des relatives sujet et objet ainsi que celui de l’attachement des relatives sujet. En prenant appui sur les approches multifactorielles, (Trueswell et Tanenhaus, 1994 ; Spivey et Tanenhaus, 1998), j’insiste sur l’insuffisance de l’approche monofactorielle souvent adoptée dans l’analyse du traitement des relatives, et je mets en avant le rôle des propriétés fines des langues. Je propose alors dans cette thèse de dépasser les notions de langue avec un avantage pour la relative sujet ou objet, ou avec une préférence avec attachement haut ou bas.Je présente d’abord les ressemblances et différences des propriétés des relatives dans les quatre langues étudiées : l’anglais, le cantonais, le français et le mandarin. Cette description permet de mieux appréhender leur rôle dans le traitement, notamment pour comprendre les différences constatées dans les expériences entre les langues.Je me concentre ensuite dans les deux Parties suivantes sur l’interaction entre des facteurs principalement syntaxiques, cognitifs et grammaticaux en jeu dans le traitement des relatives, avec des expériences de jugements d’acceptabilité et de mouvements oculaires avec le paradigme monde visuel (relatives sujet et objet dans les quatre langues étudiées, et attachement en anglais et en français). Je poursuis par une réflexion sur l’approche multifactorielle en tenant compte des facteurs liés aux domaines sémantique et pragmatique. Pour cela, j’observe le traitement des relatives sujet et objet en français et en anglais dans une étude de corpus, des expériences de jugements d’acceptabilité, de lecture par autoprésentation segmentée, et de mouvements oculaires en lecture. Enfin, pour élargir les facteurs en jeu dans le traitement des relatives au-delà du domaine linguistique, je montre l’influence d’un domaine non linguistique (amorçage mathématique) sur le domaine linguistique (attachement) en français avec des expériences de choix restreints, et de mouvements oculaires avec le paradigme monde visuel. / The present dissertation focuses on the factors implied in relative clause processing, mainly subject/object relative clauses and relative clause attachment. Based on previous multifactorial approaches (Trueswell et Tanenhaus, 1994; Spivey et Tanenhaus, 1998), I show that the usual monofactorial way of thinking about processing is inadequate and that fine-grained language properties should also be taken into account. I propose to go beyond the notion of subject/object languages or high/low attachment languages. I present the relative clause properties in four languages (English, Mandarin, Cantonese and French). This description is necessary to grasp their influence in processing, especially the differences observed across languages in experiments. Based on the linguistic description, I look at the interaction between cognitive, syntactic and grammatical factors in relative clause processing. I present acceptability judgment tasks and visual world eye-tracking experiments in order to analyse subject/object relatives in the four languages, and relative clause attachment in English and French. In line with the multifactorial approach, I analyse the influence of semantics and pragmatics in relative clause processing, especially in French and English. For that, I show a corpus study, acceptability judgment and self-paced reading tasks and eye-tracking while reading experiments. Finally, to broaden the perspective beyond the linguistic domain, I show the influence of other non-linguistic factors on relative clause processing, by presenting visual world eye-tracking and forced choice experiments about the influence of mathematical priming on relative clause attachment in French.

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The goal of the present dissertation is to display the reconstruction of the concept of understanding which has down through the history of philosophy been used as the synonym of knowing. Hence, my main intention is to focus on the Heidegger&rsquo / s and Gadamer&rsquo / s critique of epistemological conception of understanding and their reevaluation of this concept in terms of ontology. Finally, I will try to examine the similarities and dissimilarities between the philosophers and try to call attention to their emphasis on finite and historically conditioned human understanding. To fulfill the task I put forward, I shall apply to early Heidegger&rsquo / s magnum opus Being and Time (1927) and Gadamer&rsquo / s most influential book Truth and Method (1960).

Angela Carter (1940-1992) positions herself as a writer in ‘the demythologising business’ (1983b:38). She defines myth in ‘a sort of conventional sense; also in the sense that Roland Barthes uses it in Mythologies’ (in Katsavos 1994:1). Barthes states that ‘the very principle of myth’ is that ‘it transforms history into nature’ (Barthes 1993:129). This process of naturalisation transforms culturally and historically determined fictions into received truths, which are accepted as natural, even sacred. This thesis explores Carter’s demythologising approach in her collection of fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber, and her novel, Nights at the Circus. The readings of these texts are informed by the ideas that Carter discusses in her feminist manifesto The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History, which she describes as ‘a late-twentieth-century interpretation of some of the problems [de Sade] raises about the culturally determined nature of women and of the relations between men and women that result from it’ (1979:1). In The Bloody Chamber and Nights at the Circus, Carter questions the culturally determined roles that patriarchal ideology has ‘palmed off’ on women as ‘the real thing’ (1983b:38), and she scrutinizes the relations between the sexes that have resulted from them. In The Sadeian Woman, the subject-object dichotomy of gendered identity is explored as a predatory hierarchy. The Bloody Chamber explores the same ideological ground, and ‘the distinctions drawn are not so much between males and females as between “tigers” and “lambs”, carnivores and herbivores, those who are preyed upon and those who do the preying’ (Atwood 1994:118). The most discomfiting point that Carter makes in The Bloody Chamber is that patriarchal ideology has traditionally viewed women as herbivores, or ‘meat’, that is, as passive objects of desire and inert objects of exchange. In Nights at the Circus, the subject-object dichotomy is presented in its spectator-spectacle guise. Fevvers, the female protagonist, is a winged aerialiste who articulates an autonomous identity for herself that exists outside of patriarchal prescription. She presents herself as feminine spectacle and, in so doing, becomes simultaneously a spectator, as she ‘turns her own gaze on herself, producing herself as its object’ (Robinson 1991:123). Mary Ann Doane refers to this strategy of self-representation as the masquerade. In ‘flaunting femininity’, Fevvers ‘holds it at a distance’, and in this way womanliness becomes ‘a mask which can be worn or removed’ (Doane 1991:25). Susanne Schmid points out that ‘every act of deconstruction entails a process of reconstructing something else’ (1996:155), and this suggests that Carter, in demythologising, also remythologises. Roland Barthes argues that ‘the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth’ (1993:135). In the characterisation of Fevvers, Carter creates an ‘artificial myth’ that does not present itself as either eternal or immutable. In masquerading as a feminine spectacle, Fevvers temporarily incarnates an archetypal femininity. But this is just a performance, for Fevvers is also an agent of self-representation, and so she is both a real woman and an artificial myth of femininity. / Dissertation (MA (English))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / English / unrestricted

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:59:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Elizandra Pereira.pdf: 5332852 bytes, checksum: ae54f607db4f3feb966110cfff70e0c2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-09-30 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / This paper has as its aim analyzing the novel A CARNE, by Júlio Ribeiro (1888), according to the Impressionist painting view, in order to revalue it while an esthetic object, under the Naturalism and Impressionism conceptions. The first chapter deals with the analysis perspective which is able to verify the inter-relations between image and word in tension areas of the narrative between narration and description. This favors, at the same time, the perception and the observation of the word that is being read through the application of the artistic and impressionist proceedings on the literary discursive material. The second chapter enlights new possibilities for the plastic-visual articulation, materialized in the literary word by considering the impressions and sensations of the real world as an object. By means of the reflection on the real, the Impressionist artist Claude Monet used to project his painting diagrams on the screen. This way, Júlio Ribeiro s literary word is delegated to the narrator under two proceeding aspects: the scene told as word and the scene shown as image. The third chapter shows that the tension zones are crossed sometimes by the narrator s view and others by the character s one, resulting in the dissociation subject-object in the literary discourse. This is what bases the synthesis word-object beneath the Impressionist perspective between the artist and/or writer s reflections and depuration. In the conclusion, it is finally detached that in A CARNE , by Júlio Ribeiro, the image, together with the word in experimentation, receives an artistic function of presenting the body of the word-object, to the reader, to the literature understood as word-body in an acting of representing the real / A presente dissertação tem por objetivo analisar o romance A CARNE, de Júlio Ribeiro (1888), sob o olhar impressionista da pintura para reavaliá-lo enquanto objeto estético, sob as concepções do Naturalismo e Impressionismo. O Capítulo I trata da perspectiva de análise em adoção que pretende verificar as inter-relações imagem e palavra em áreas de tensão da narrativa entre narração e descrição. O que favorece, a um só tempo, a percepção e a observação da palavra em leitura por meio de procedimentos artísticos impressionistas aplicados ao material discursivo literário. O Capítulo II aclara essas novas possibilidades de articulação do plásticovisual, materializadas na palavra literária pela via das impressões e sensações do mundo real enquanto objeto. Mediante a reflexão do real, é que o artista impressionista Claude Monet projetava os diagramas de suas pinturas em telas. Para tanto, a palavra literária de Júlio Ribeiro é delegada ao narrador sob dois aspectos de procedimento: a cena contada como palavra e a cena mostrada como imagem. O capítulo III mostra que as zonas de tensão são cruzadas ora pelo olhar do narrador, ora pelo olhar da personagem, resultando na dissociação sujeito-objeto no discurso literário. É o que fundamenta a síntese palavra-objeto sob a perspectiva impressionista entre a reflexão e a depuração do artista e/ou do escritor. Na conclusão, destaca-se, afinal, que, em A CARNE , de Júlio Ribeiro, a imagem, junto à palavra em experimentação, recebe a função artística de apresentar o corpo da palavra-objeto, ao leitor, para a literatura entendida como palavra-corpo em ato de representação do real

The aim of this study is to understand how dance is becoming through the subject. What agents are entangled in the process of becoming, and what hierarchies are at work within my practice. I want to find out how they figurate and see if it´s possible for these hierarchies to reach positions that are more anti- essential. The study wants to assist with the understanding of this multilayer of relationships that are ongoing in the becoming of dance. The study moves in relation to posthumanist theories, with emphasis on materialists such as Rosi Braidotti and her nomadic subject. The nomadic subject is significant and fundamental to the study because it uses materialistic understandings of the world while not renouncing the subject's previously situational experience and embodied knowledge and takes special considerations to both the external and internal complexity of the subjects becoming. In posthumanist theories, or materialism, material and non-material things as well as humans and non-humans have agency. It is the relationship between different kinds of matter that creates the understanding of what is in the process of becoming. Through diffractive readings, the understanding of intra-action, and with the nomadic subject as a theoretical base, this thesis wants to make visible the different aspects and relations that are active in the becoming of dance through the subject. In addition, linked to the research topic choreography, the study wants to contribute with knowledge about the expanded field of choreography by understanding how internal and external factors contribute to how dance is becoming through the subject. The study also wants to provide and develop understandings for didactical and pedagogical contexts. My own practice is the material on which this study is based and through it I seek understanding for my questions.

Defining rarity as a relative quality in matter roughly opposite to density, this dissertation focusses on the way material qualities of molecular gases, such as semi-opacity, permeation, and blending, inform modernist representations of embodied spatial experience. In modernist writing, rare matter—including air, fog, smoke, and haze—functions as an active component of the sensory environment, filling up the negative space that sets off subjects from objects, and characters from settings. Representing matter across the full range of the rarity-density spectrum allows modernist writers to challenge the ontological status of such boundaries, and to develop dynamic spatial models of the self-world threshold. The Introduction defines rare matter and examines its function as a sensory medium that can alternately define and blur subject/object boundaries. Interpreting dynamic thresholds as products of authorial activism, I argue that modernist narratives disrupt the normative constructions of the self-world boundary that prevailed in biomedical discourse around the turn of the century. Chapter 1, seeking to expand the scope of modernist object studies to include rare matter, analyzes illustrated books about London to demonstrate the increased cultural visibility of the atmosphere in the modernist period. Visual and verbal gestalt effects, modelled on the hermeneutic oscillation between looking at and looking through the fog, foreground the materiality of the atmosphere that fills up three-dimensional space, pressing up against the thresholds of the body and disrupting fixed distinctions between subjects and their surroundings. Chapter 2 shows how D. H. Lawrence harnesses the properties of rare matter to construct dynamic representations of the self-world boundary. In his early novels and his criticism, the oscillation between self-diffusion and self-differentiation expresses characters’ psychological responsiveness to changing interpersonal and ontological pressures. Chapter 3 demonstrates how Virginia Woolf takes advantage of rare attributes like permeation, fluid motion, and variable particle spacing to model process-oriented communities that incorporate dynamic shifts between social autonomy and collective identity. The Conclusion examines rare imagery in modernist scenes of narration, arguing that dynamic self-world thresholds help to articulate a responsive form of reader-text interaction that allows for the alternation of independent and collaborative reading practices.

Defining rarity as a relative quality in matter roughly opposite to density, this dissertation focusses on the way material qualities of molecular gases, such as semi-opacity, permeation, and blending, inform modernist representations of embodied spatial experience. In modernist writing, rare matter—including air, fog, smoke, and haze—functions as an active component of the sensory environment, filling up the negative space that sets off subjects from objects, and characters from settings. Representing matter across the full range of the rarity-density spectrum allows modernist writers to challenge the ontological status of such boundaries, and to develop dynamic spatial models of the self-world threshold. The Introduction defines rare matter and examines its function as a sensory medium that can alternately define and blur subject/object boundaries. Interpreting dynamic thresholds as products of authorial activism, I argue that modernist narratives disrupt the normative constructions of the self-world boundary that prevailed in biomedical discourse around the turn of the century. Chapter 1, seeking to expand the scope of modernist object studies to include rare matter, analyzes illustrated books about London to demonstrate the increased cultural visibility of the atmosphere in the modernist period. Visual and verbal gestalt effects, modelled on the hermeneutic oscillation between looking at and looking through the fog, foreground the materiality of the atmosphere that fills up three-dimensional space, pressing up against the thresholds of the body and disrupting fixed distinctions between subjects and their surroundings. Chapter 2 shows how D. H. Lawrence harnesses the properties of rare matter to construct dynamic representations of the self-world boundary. In his early novels and his criticism, the oscillation between self-diffusion and self-differentiation expresses characters’ psychological responsiveness to changing interpersonal and ontological pressures. Chapter 3 demonstrates how Virginia Woolf takes advantage of rare attributes like permeation, fluid motion, and variable particle spacing to model process-oriented communities that incorporate dynamic shifts between social autonomy and collective identity. The Conclusion examines rare imagery in modernist scenes of narration, arguing that dynamic self-world thresholds help to articulate a responsive form of reader-text interaction that allows for the alternation of independent and collaborative reading practices.

This thesis has two central goals. The first is to theorize the confrontation of Indigenous societies and European settler society as, among other things, a conflict between two opposing conceptions of the human relationship with nature — human ecology. The Western/settler view is that nature is external to humans and instrumental to their development. John Locke’s philosophy provides an excellent example of this type of thinking. In contrast, the world-view of many Indigenous societies is characterized by a sense of ontological continuity between humans and the ecology. The second aim of this thesis is to contribute to ecological political theory by exploring the contrast between these two divergent views of human ecology. It is suggested that this contrast provides a theoretically fertile site for an ecological politics suitable for a post-modern, post-capitalist future. These theoretical observations are grounded in a concrete case study: the Delgamuukw legal episode. / Graduate