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Badía, Guillermo. "Possible Worlds and Paradoxes." Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú - Departamento de Humanidades, 2013. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/113009.
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Robert Adams' definition of a possible world is paradoxical according to Selmer Bringsjord, Patrick Grim and, more recently, Cristopher Menzel. The proofs given by Bringsjord and Grim relied crucially on the Powerset Axiom; Christoper Menzel showed that, while this continued tobe the case, there was still hope for Adams' definition, but Menzel he undustedan old russellian paradox in order to prove that we could obtain the same paradoxical consequences without appealing to any other set theory than the Axiomof Separation. Nevertheless, Menzel's result only showed that there was no actualworld. In this paper we try to generalize Russell's paradox to arbitrary possible worlds without introducing an irreducible modal component in the discussion.La definición de un mundo posible” de Robert Adams es paradójica, de acuerdo con Selmer Bringsjord, Patrick Grim y Cristopher Menzel. Las pruebas de Bringsjord y Grim utilizaban el axioma del Conjunto Potencia; Cristopher Menzel objetó que, mientras este fuese el caso, todavía existía esperanza para la definición de Adams, pero Menzel desempolvó una vieja paradoja de Russell para demostrar que podíamos obtener las mismas conclusiones sin apelar a otra teoría de conjuntos que el Axioma de Separación. Sin embargo, el resultado de Menzel mostraba solo que no existía el mundo actual. En este trabajo intentamos generalizar la paradoja de Russell a mundos posibles arbitrarios sin necesidad de introducir conceptos modales en la discusión.
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Raghunath, Riyukta. "Alternative realities : counterfactual historical fiction and possible worlds theory." Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2017. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/19154/.
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The primary aim of my thesis is to offer a cognitive-narratological methodology with which to analyse counterfactual historical fiction. Counterfactual historical fiction is a genre that creates fictional worlds whose histories run contrary to the history of the actual world. I argue that Possible Worlds Theory is a suitable methodology with which to analyse this type of fiction because it is an ontologically centred theory that can be used to divide the worlds of a text into its various ontological domains and also explain their relation to the actual world. Ryan (1991) offers the most appropriate Possible Worlds framework with which to analyse any fiction. However, in its current form the theory does not sufficiently address the role of readers in its analysis of fiction. Given the close relationship between the actual world and the counterfactual world created by counterfactual historical fiction, I argue that a model to analyse such texts must go beyond categorising the worlds of texts by also theorising what readers do when they read this type of fiction. For this purpose, in my thesis I refine Ryan's Possible Worlds framework so that it can be used to more effectively analyse counterfactual historical fiction. In particular, I introduce an ontological domain which I am calling RK-worlds or reader knowledge worlds to label the domain that readers use to apprehend the counterfactual world presented by the text. I also offer two cognitive concepts – ontolological superimposition and reciprocal feedback – that support a Possible Worlds analysis of counterfactual historical fiction and model how readers process such fiction. In addition, I redefine counterpart theory, transworld identity, and essential properties to appropriately theorise the way readers make the epistemological link between a character and their corresponding actual world individual. The result is a fully fleshed out Possible Worlds model that addresses the reader's role by focusing on how they cognitively interact with the worlds built by counterfactual historical fiction. Finally, to demonstrate my model's dexterity, I apply it to three texts – Robert Harris' Fatherland (1992), Sarban's The Sound of his Horn (1952), and Stephen Fry's Making History (1996). I conclude that the Possible Worlds model that I have developed is rigorous and can be replicated to analyse all fiction in general and counterfactual historical fiction in particular.
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Brason, Eloise. "Embedded Madness: Mad Narrators and Possible Worlds." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-170451.
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Madness has long been a popular theme for literature, featuring as a trope of horror, mystery, tragedy and comedy genres in varying degrees of amplitude. The topic has provided a significant access point for analysing historical, socio-political and cultural issues as it addresses controversial themes of alienation and criminality as well as philosophical theories of perception and consciousness. As a result, studies on the representation of madness in literature have been dominated by historical approaches that focus directly on social, political, philosophical and psychoanalytical interpretive models. Comparatively little has been done to analyse madness in literature from a narratological perspective. It is for this reason that I will conduct a narratological study on the impact of madness on narrative and fictional world structures. I am specifically interested in the way in which madness can be embedded across multiple levels of the narrative and the effect that this has on readers’ imaginative and interpretive processes. Close readings of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996) Bret Easton-Ellis’ American Psycho (1991) and John Banville’s The Book of Evidence (1989) will uncover some of the techniques that are used to embed madness into the textual and imaginative structures of a narrative, and will demonstrate how this works to deceive and challenge the reader. I will demonstrate the need for an expansion of terms within the narratological model that can cope specifically with the theme of madness.
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Dick, Bailey G. "“Is It Not Possible to Be a Radical and a Christian?” Dorothy Day Navigates thePatriarchal Worlds of Journalism and Catholicism." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1526040503387041.
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Laurie, Henri De Guise. "Transferentiality :|bmapping the margins of postmodern fiction / H. de G. Laurie." Thesis, North-West University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/9670.
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This thesis starts from the observation that, while it is common for commentators to divide postmodern fiction into two general fields – one experimental and anti-mimetic, the other cautiously mimetic, there remains a fairly significant field of postmodern texts that use largely mimetic approaches but represent worlds that are categorically distinct from actuality. This third group is even more pronounced if popular culture and “commercial” fiction, in particular sf and fantasy, are taken into account. Additionally, the third category has the interesting characteristic that the texts within this group very often generate unusual loyalty among its fans.
Based on a renewed investigation of the main genre critics in postmodern fiction, the first chapter suggests a tripartite division of postmodern fiction, into formalist, metamimetic, and transreferetial texts. These are provisionally circumscribed by their reference worlds: formalist fiction attempts to derail its own capacity for presenting a world; metamimetic fiction presents mediated versions of worlds closely reminiscent of actuality; and transreferential fiction sets its narrative in worlds that are experienced as such, but are clearly distinct from actuality.
If transreferential fiction deals with alternate worlds, it also very often relies on the reader’s immersion in the fictional world to provide unique, often subversive, fictional experiences. This process can be identified as the exploration of the fictional world, and it is very often guided so as to be experienced as a virtual reality of sorts.
If transreferential texts are experienced as interactive in this sense, it is likely that they convey experiences and insights in ways different from either of the other two strands of postmodern fiction.
In order to investigate the interactive experience provided by these texts, an extended conceptual and analytical set is proposed, rooted primarily in Ricoeurian hermeutics and possible-worlds theory. These two main theoretical approaches approximately correspond to the temporal and the spatial dimensions of texts, respectively. Much of the power of these texts rooted in the care they take to guide the reader through their fictional worlds and the experiences offered by the narrative, often at the hand of fictioninternal ‘guides’.
These theoretical approaches are supplement by sf theoretical research and by Aleid Fokkema’s study of postmodern character.
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 apply the theoretical toolset to three paradigmatic transreferential texts: sf New Wave author M John Harrison’s Viriconium sequence; Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy; and Jeff Noon’s Vurt and Pollen, texts that have much in common with cyberpunk but which make much more extensive use of formalist techniques. Each chapter has a slightly different main focus, matching the text in question, respectively: aesthetic parameters and worldcreation strategies of transreferential fiction; close “guidance” of the reader and extrapolation; and virtual reality and identity games.
The final chapter presents the findings from the research conducted in the initial study. The findings stem from the central insight that transreferential texts deploy a powerful suit of mimetic strategies to maximise immersion, but simultaneously introduce a variety of interactive strategies. Transreferential fiction balances immersion against interactivity, often by selectively maximising the mimesis of some elements while allowing others to be presented through formalist strategies, which requires a reading mode that is simultaneously immersive and open to challenging propositions. A significant implication of this for critical studies – both literary and sf – is that the Barthesian formalist reading model is insufficient to deal with transreferential texts. Rather, texts like these demand a layered reading approach which facilitates immersion on a first reading and supplements it critically on a second.
The final chapter further considers how widely and in what forms the themes and strategies found in the preceding chapters recur in other texts from the proposed transreferential supergenre, including sf, magic realist and limitpostmodernist texts.Thesis (PhD (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.
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Foster, Jonathan. "The Non-World : Inaccessibility and Law in Charles Dickens' Bleak House." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-126573.
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The representation of Chancery court in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-3) emphasises the inaccessibility of this institution to members of the laity. Dickens’ critique of Chancery chimes with Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological description of law as a formalistic social field defined by practices of exclusion. Dickens’ Chancery is however further inaccessible since it departs from Dickens’ laypeople’s horizons of expectation as a bureaucratic organisation characterised by its structural dispersion and the generation of great quantities of writing. This thesis therefore scrutinises Dickens’ treatment of Chancery in light of media-theoretical and geocritical, as well as sociological, frameworks and perspectives. This essay demonstrates that Dickens’ account of the institution of Chancery as conceptually inaccessible amounts to what I term a non-world heuristic. I contend that Dickens’ take on law anticipates what Fredric Jameson famously theorises as the dizzying “global world system” of late capitalism; the non-world heuristic of Bleak House—which combats disorientation in the social domain of law—may thus be understood as an early example of what Jameson terms an “aesthetic of cognitive mapping.” The non-world heuristic, this thesis proposes, likely has a role to play also in fictional attempts to cognitively map the global world system. I theorise the non-world heuristic in light of the discourse on accessibility in possible-worlds theory and the Kantian sublime, finding that the sublime non-world of Chancery is made accessible as inaccessible and that this dynamic is integral to Dickens’ aesthetic both as a maker of cognitive maps and as a realist novelist.
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Reis, Maurício Duarte Luís. "On theory multiple contraction." Doctoral thesis, Universidade da Madeira, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.13/255.
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The one which is considered the standard model of theory change was presented in
[AGM85] and is known as the AGM model. In particular, that paper introduced
the class of partial meet contractions. In subsequent works several alternative constructive models for that same class of functions were presented, e.g.: safe/kernel
contractions ([AM85, Han94]), system of spheres-based contractions ([Gro88]) and
epistemic entrenchment-based contractions ([G ar88, GM88]).
Besides, several generalizations of such model were investigated. In that regard
we emphasise the presentation of models which accounted for contractions by sets of
sentences rather than only by a single sentence, i.e. multiple contractions. However, until now, only two of the above mentioned models have been generalized in the
sense of addressing the case of contractions by sets of sentences: The partial meet
multiple contractions were presented in [Han89, FH94], while the kernel multiple
contractions were introduced in [FSS03].
In this thesis we propose two new constructive models of multiple contraction
functions, namely the system of spheres-based and the epistemic entrenchment-based
multiple contractions which generalize the models of system of spheres-based and of
epistemic entrenchment-based contractions, respectively, to the case of contractions
(of theories) by sets of sentences. Furthermore, analogously to what is the case
in what concerns the corresponding classes of contraction functions by one single
sentence, those two classes are identical and constitute a subclass of the class of
partial meet multiple contractions.
Additionally, and as the rst step of the procedure that is here followed to
obtain an adequate de nition for the system of spheres-based multiple contractions,
we present a possible worlds semantics for the partial meet multiple contractions
analogous to the one proposed in [Gro88] for the partial meet contractions (by one
single sentence).
Finally, we present yet an axiomatic characterization for the new class(es) of
multiple contraction functions that are here introduced.Eduardo Fermé
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Swift, Elizabeth. "The hypertextual experience : digital narratives, spectator, performance." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/16025.
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This thesis demonstrates how the dynamics of hypertext fiction can inform an understanding of spectatorial practices provoked by contemporary performance and installation work. It develops the notion of the ‘hypertextual experience’ to encapsulate the particular qualities of active user engagement instigated by the unstable aesthetic environments common to digital and non-digital artworks. The significance and application of this term will be refined through an examination of different works in each of the study’s six chapters. Those discussed are as follows: Performances: Susurrus, by David Leddy; Love Letters Straight from the Heart and Make Better Please, by Uninvited Guests; The Waves, by Katie Mitchell; House/ Lights and Route 1 & 9, by the Wooster Group; Two Undiscovered Amerindians Discover the West, by Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Digital works: Afternoon (1987) by Michael Joyce; Victory Garden (1992) by Stuart Moulthrop; TOC by Steve Tomasula; The Princess Murderer by Deena Larsen. Installations: H.G. and Mozart’s House, by Robert Wilson; Listening Post, by Mark Hanson and Ben Rubin. In developing and discussing the hypertextual experience the thesis uses a number of conceptual frameworks and draws on philosophical perspectives and digital theory. A central part of the study employs an adaptation of possible worlds theory that has been recently developed by digital theorists for examining hypertext fiction. I extend this application to installation and performance and explore the implications of framing a spectator’s experience in terms of a hypertextual structure which foregrounds its performative operations and its engagement with machinic processes.
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Eyim, Ahmet. "On The Significannce Of Idealizations In Science." Master's thesis, METU, 2005. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12605777/index.pdf.
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The aim of this thesis is to investigate the problems that use of idealizations in science leads to. Idealizations are simplifications and therefore false descriptions of how actual objects behave. Presence of idealizations in scientific theories is the reason for the problems in our understanding of confirmation of theories and also of scientific explanations. Nevertheless, idealizations are ubiquitous especially in natural sciences. Scientists have to employ idealizations because of the complexity of the real world and our limited capacity of computation. The roots of the methodology of modern science are in Cartesian philosophy. I propose that Descartes also employed idealizations in his theory of motion in the universe. Idealized worlds can be regarded as simplifications of the real world. Scientific theories are literally false but they are true in the possible worlds which are similar to the real world. Models provide the connections between idealized laws and the real world. Construction of models of the actual world is based upon idealizations which are indispensable in the theoretical sciences. Theories can be indirectly confirmed by models denoting different aspects of the phenomena.
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Zúniga, Elfström Love. "16 sätt att yla : Narratologiska anaylser av Porpentines Howling Dogs och Abigail Corfmans 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för kultur och estetik, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-189888.
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I denna uppsats analyseras spelen Howling Dogs och 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds ur ett narratologiskt perspektiv. Huvuddelen av analysen fokuserar på hur hypertextens mediala förhållanden påverkar relationen mellan spelaren och narrativet samt på förhållandet mellan berättare och lyssnarinstans. Analysen baserar sig på metoder med utgångspunkt i possible worlds theory, formulerat av Alice Bell. Uppsatsen exemplifierar hur man går till väga i analys av texter med ett starkt deiktiskt förhållande mellan texten och läsaren. Syftet är att undersöka existerande metoder och att förbättra dem, tillika en, möjligtvis naiv, förhoppning om att komma ett steg närmare ett större litteraturvetenskapligt intresse gällande vad spel kan tillföra litteraturvetenskapen.This essay contains narratological analyses of the games Howling Dogs and 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds. The analyses are focused on the hypertext’s medial impact on the relations between user and narrative as well as narrator and narratee. The work is based on methods using possible worlds theory, created by theorists such as Alice Bell. A main purpose here is to further exemplify how to analyze texts having a deictic effect between themselves self and their readers. The purpose here is thus to test existing methods and further develop them. This purpose is also motivated by a, possibly naïve, hope of getting one step closer to a wider acknowledgement of how games can contribute to the subject of literature.
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LeBlanc, Paul D. "Indus Epigraphic Perspectives: Exploring Past Decipherment Attempts & Possible New Approaches." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/26166.
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First appearing on potsherds around 3300 BC, the Indus script was primarily in use during the Mature Harappan period (ca. 2600-1900 BC) in the Indus Valley region, centred in the north-western region of the Indian Subcontinent. It is one of the last remaining undeciphered scripts of the ancient world. A great number of Indus inscriptions, however, have been uncovered at many archaeological sites in the Persian Gulf, discoveries that corroborate the inclusion of the Indus civilization as an active participant in the Mesopotamian-dominated Gulf trade of the 3rd millennium. In addition to exploring the current state of research surrounding the Indus decipherment attempts, the thesis will examine new perspectives on ancient history, arguing in favour of various possibilities of Mesopotamian, Elamite, and/or pre-dynastic Egyptian (North East African) cultural presences or influences in the ancient Indus River basin.
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Constant, Thomas. "Possible worlds and ideology." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2017. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/107744/.
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The broad aim of this thesis is to explore fruitful connections between ideology theory and the philosophy of possible worlds (PW). Ideologies are full of modal concepts, such as possibility, potential, necessity, essence, contingency and accident. Typically, PWs are articulated for the analysis and illumination of modal concepts. That naturally suggests a method for theorising ideological modality, utilising PW theory. The specific conclusions of the thesis proffer a number of original contributions to knowledge: 1) PWs should only be used for explication and not as (intrinsic) evidence or criteria of assessment in ideology theory. The estimation of (e.g.) utopian possibilities, human essences and freedoms must be determined by extrinsic criteria. PWs can serve only as a window or means of expression but not as a set of evaluative premises. 2) For this purpose, a modified version of Lewisian genuine realism (GR), with its device of counterpart theory, is the best approach; the alternative theories risk constricting possibilities or smuggling in assumptions that ought to be objects of analysis in ideology theory. This is instructive, since ideology theorists are prone to pick and choose favoured aspects of modal philosophy without further argument. 3) Conclusions (1) and (2) suggest the adoption of GR or fictionalist GR. Overall, the actualist options are less adequate. Fictionalism, by contrast, is a worthwhile contender, but it too presents comparative weaknesses which reinforce GR’s standing as a potent challenger to the modal metaphysician. Therefore, this thesis presents additional reasons (to Lewis’s) to think GR true. The conclusions are not knockdown, and I draw out incentives and consequences for adopting alternative stances. The various chapters also provide specific details for comprehending and debating ideological modals.
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King, Peter J. "The ontology of possible worlds." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.361950.
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Dreshfield, Anne C. ""All are finally fictions": Fan Fiction as Creative Empowerment Through the Re-Writing of "Reality"." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/237.
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This paper examines online fan fiction communities as spaces for identity formation, collaborative creativity, and fan empowerment. Drawing on case studies of a LiveJournal fan fiction community, fan-written essays, possible world theory, and postmodern theories of the hyperreal and simulacrum, this paper argues that writing fan fiction is a definitive, postmodern act that explores the mutable boundaries of reality and fiction. It concludes that fans are no longer passive consumers of popular media—rather, they are engaged, powerful participants in the creation of celebrity representation that can, ultimately, alter reality.
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Cristofari, Cécile. "Cosmogonies imaginaires : les mondes secondaires dans la science-fiction et la fantasy anglophones, de 1929 à nos jours." Thesis, Aix-Marseille, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013AIXM3030.
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J'ai voulu étudier un phénomène qui sous-tend l'écriture de la littérature spéculative (science-fiction et fantasy) aujourd'hui : la création d'un « monde secondaire », selon l'expression de J.R.R. Tolkien. Deux problèmes se posaient de prime abord. Premièrement, l'ensemble culturel et éditorial que recouvre l'expression « littérature spéculative » est relativement flou, du fait des problèmes de délimitation des genres et de la problématique culturelle plus générale (la littérature spéculative est-elle définie par des motifs littéraires, ou par l'appareil culturel qui l'entoure ?). Deuxièmement, un « monde secondaire » est-il uniquement un univers inventé entièrement différent ou détaché du monde réel, ou peut-il recouper le monde réel, etc. ? La littérature spéculative étant un genre foisonnant et en pleine évolution, j'ai pris le parti de ne pas donner de réponses définitives. Plutôt que de tenter de tracer des frontières, j'ai cherché à mettre en évidence les différents éléments dont se constituent les mondes secondaires : les traditions du genre sur lesquels les auteurs s'appuient pour transmettre la vision d'un univers original à leurs lecteurs, entre mise en avant de l'originalité et utilisation d'éléments connus comme soubassement, ainsi que la vision particulière de l'histoire, de la géographie et de la place de l'humanité dans le monde que les auteurs développent. Cette réflexion se veut située à la fois en amont et en aval de l'acte d'écriture. Elle se conclut sur les questions qui se posent aux auteurs contemporains : questions de renouvellement du genre, ou d'ouverture sur les autres médias, en particulier ceux que pratiquent les amateursI endeavoured to study a phenomenon underlying contemporary speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy): the creation of a ‘secondary world', to use J.R.R. Tolkien's phrasing. I had to solve two preliminary problems. First, the cultural and economic phenomenon that speculative fiction represents has a blurry outline, questions regarding genre delimitation and wider cultural problems (is speculative fiction defined only by a number of literary patterns, or by the whole cultural apparatus that goes with it?) being difficult to answer. Secondly, does the notion secondary worlds only apply to invented worlds that are entirely different or detached from the real world, or can it be applied to texts that take place at least partly in the real world, etc.? Speculative fiction being a diverse genre that has been steadily evolving for years, I have chosen to avoid giving definitive answers to those questions. Instead of looking for boundaries, I have tried to emphasise the various building blocks of secondary worlds in speculative fiction: the traditions of the genre authors rely on to convey their view of an original universe to their readers, in a dialogue between known elements used as a foundation and the idiosyncratic view of history, geography and the place of mankind in the particular secondary world developed by the author. In an attempt to open this study to the contemporary practice of world-building, I have concluded with the questions that speculative fiction authors face today: how to renew the tropes of the genre, how speculative fiction pervades other media, in particular the practices of fans
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Burcea, Horatiu. "Les fins du voyage : espace, rhétorique et identité chez Peter Fleming." Thesis, Paris 4, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017PA040172.
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Les fins du voyage chez Peter Fleming sont entendues comme déclins, comme lignes de rupture, comme aboutissements, comme principes moteurs et comme finalités. Trois pistes sont explorées pour comprendre ces fins ; la première postule une volonté anesthétique de la part de l’auteur : la finalité de nier son expérience esthétique et en même temps de rechercher l’extrême en tant qu’anesthésique, en tant que palliation, reproduction et transfert d’expériences traumatiques. La seconde concerne son utilisation de l’art rhétorique pour reproduire et en même temps se jouer des conventions et des attentes du lecteur. On peut parler ici d’une psychologie inversée qui va lui permettre de brouiller ses pistes, de multiplier les interprétations potentielles et de réfléchir son identité de manière protéiforme. Enfin, la troisième propose l’étude des aspects dunamiques de ses récits – un néologisme faisant référence à la sphère de la potentialité. Ce modèle permet de construire une analyse littéraire et anthropologique des alternatives pensées, envisagées et narrées par l’auteur qui va complémenter celle des discours et des itinéraires actualisés. L’identité auctoriale est définie dans ce contexte comme un espace intermédiaire, trans-mondes et hétérotopique, qui se situe entre tous les possibles et ce qui estThe ends of travel in Peter Fleming’s works are seen as declines, lines of rupture, outcomes, driving principles and goals. Three paths are explored to understand these ends. The first postulates an anaesthetic intention on the part of the author: the purpose of denying his aesthetic experience and at the same time of seeking extreme sensation as an anesthetic, as palliation, reproduction and transfer of traumatic experience. The second focuses on his use of rhetorical art to reproduce and, at the same time, to play with the conventions and expectations of the reader. His use of reverse psychology allows the creation of a broad spectrum of interpretations and the projection of his identity in a protean manner. Finally, the third aims at analyzing the dunamic aspects of his narratives – a neologism referring to the sphere of potentiality. This model allows the literary and anthropological analysis of the potential alternatives contemplated, suggested and narrated by the author, one that is meant to complement the study of his actual itineraries and discourses. Authorial identity is defined in this context as an intermediate, trans-world and heterotopic space which lies between what is and everything that could be
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Rettová, Alena. "`The best of all possible worlds´?" Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, 2012. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-97690.
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The German philosopher and mathematican Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, maintained that this world god created was the best of all possible worlds. God could not have created a world that would contain a contradiction. In Descartes`opossed view, it was possible for God to create a world containing contradictions. The two philosophers`s dispute concerned the issue of what is it that is necessary, as opossed to that which is arbitrary, in a created world. Against this background, I would like to discuss William E. Mkufya`s novel, Ziraili na Zirani.
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Bell, Alice M. "The possible worlds of hypertext fiction." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.434659.
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Caro, Hernan D. "The best of all possible Worlds?" Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Philosophische Fakultät I, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/17054.
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In dieser Arbeit werden vier zwischen 1712 und 1755 entstandene Kritiken von Leibniz’ Optimismus-Lehre der ‚besten aller möglichen Welten‘, wie diese in der Theodizee (1710) vorgestellt wird, dargestellt und kritisch untersucht. Nach der Meinung etlicher Kommentatoren wurde Leibniz’ philosophischer Optimismus erst nach dem Erdbeben von Lissabon 1755 und Voltaires Angriffen zum Ziel gewichtiger Kritiken seitens Philosophen und Theologen. Gegen dieses geläufige Bild zeigt diese Dissertation, dass jene Kritiken sehr bald nach der Veröffentlichung der Theodizee kamen, und dass zentrale Thesen des Leibniz’schen Optimismus schon in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jh. Gegenstand philosophiegeschichtlich bedeutender Polemiken waren. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Kritik an Leibniz’ Gottesbegriff – der in dieser Arbeit als ‚intellektualistisch‘ bezeichnet wird – eine fundamentale Rolle spielt, und dass ein beträchtlicher Teil des Konflikts zwischen dem Optimismus und dem frühen ‚Gegen-Optimismus‘ durch den Konflikt zwischen Intellektualismus und Voluntarismus erklärt werden kann.This work describes and examines four critical reviews, all of them written between 1712 and 1755, of Leibniz’s theory of optimism or the system of ‘the best of all possible worlds’, as it is presented in the Theodicy (1710). Several commentators state that the first important criticisms of Leibnizian philosophical optimism by philosophers and theologians came only after the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and Voltaire’s subsequent attacks. In opposition to this standard picture, this dissertation shows that criticisms emerged very soon after the publication of Theodicy, and that central theses of Leibniz’s optimism were already the target of significant philosophical criticisms in the first half of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the criticism of Leibniz’s concept of God – a concept described here as ‘intellectualist’ – plays a fundamental role, and that a considerable part of the conflict between optimism and early ‘counter-optimism’ can be explained by referring to the conflict between intellectualism and voluntarism.
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Al-Jasim, Samir Talib Dawood. "The possible worlds of Shakespearean drama." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/15357.
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This study addresses the role of the possible or virtual in Shakespearean drama. It argues that the possible component constitutes an integral part of Shakespearean drama, and that they are as important as the actual events or component. To underscore its paramount importance, the study stresses two aspects of the possible in Shakespearean drama: its potentiality and its cognitive function. Potentiality highlights the power of the virtual in opening up different meanings and interpretations, suggesting alternative possibilities and creating new storylines out of the original ones. The cognitive function of the virtual or possible underlines its role in rendering the actual events and happenings more intelligible, probable and comprehensible. The study builds on the theoretical framework of possible worlds theory as well as Classical and Renaissance rhetoric; it argues that Shakespeare’s familiarity with and employment of these notions can be attributed to his rhetorical training, which formed an essential part of Elizabethan education. The study deals with the drama both as a fictional story and as theatre. On the level of theatre, it demonstrates that, despite its materiality, theatre must stimulate an imaginary virtual reality if the physical events and happenings onstage are to be fully meaningful. On the level of the fictional story, it shows that virtual or possible events form the beliefs and intentions of characters. They help to set the conflict on track and help the audience to access the characters’ inwardness. Although the possible is thought of as an ontological category, the study highlights its cognitive dimension, and argues that features of the possible even shape our image of the actual past. It addresses this question in relation to the representation of history in Shakespeare’s history plays. Finally, it deals with counterfactual statements in Shakespeare and uses a multidisciplinary approach to study their significance.
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Bilokonsky, Mykola. "Inaccessible worlds a possible worlds narrative analysis of select modernist texts /." Connect to resource, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1811/24242.
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Thesis (Honors)--Ohio State University, 2006.Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages: contains 48 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 48). Available online via Ohio State University's Knowledge Bank.
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Kindermann, Dirk. "Perspective in context : relative truth, knowledge, and the first person." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3164.
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This dissertation is about the nature of perspectival thoughts and the context-sensitivity of the language used to express them. It focuses on two kinds of perspectival thoughts: ‘subjective' evaluative thoughts about matters of personal taste, such as 'Beetroot is delicious' or 'Skydiving is fun', and first-personal or de se thoughts about oneself, such as 'I am hungry' or 'I have been fooled.' The dissertation defends of a novel form of relativism about truth - the idea that the truth of some (but not all) perspectival thought and talk is relative to the perspective of an evaluating subject or group. In Part I, I argue that the realm of ‘subjective' evaluative thought and talk whose truth is perspective-relative includes attributions of knowledge of the form 'S knows that p.' Following a brief introduction (chapter 1), chapter 2 presents a new, error-theoretic objection against relativism about knowledge attributions. The case for relativism regarding knowledge attributions rests on the claim that relativism is the only view that explains all of the empirical data from speakers' use of the word "know" without recourse to an error theory. In chapter 2, I show that the relativist can only account for sceptical paradoxes and ordinary epistemic closure puzzles if she attributes a problematic form of semantic blindness to speakers. However, in 3 I show that all major competitor theories - forms of invariantism and contextualism - are subject to equally serious error-theoretic objections. This raises the following fundamental question for empirical theorising about the meaning of natural language expressions: If error attributions are ubiquitous, by which criteria do we evaluate and compare the force of error-theoretic objections and the plausibility of error attributions? I provide a number of criteria and argue that they give us reason to think that relativism's error attributions are more plausible than those of its competitors. In Part II, I develop a novel unified account of the content and communication of perspectival thoughts. Many relativists regarding ‘subjective' thoughts and Lewisians about de se thoughts endorse a view of belief as self-location. In chapter 4, I argue that the self-location view of belief is in conflict with the received picture of linguistic communication, which understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. I argue that understanding mental content and speech act content in terms of sequenced worlds allows a reconciliation of these views. On the view I advocate, content is modelled as a set of sequenced worlds - possible worlds ‘centred' on a group of individuals inhabiting the world at some time. Intuitively, a sequenced world is a way a group of people may be. I develop a Stalnakerian model of communication based on sequenced worlds content, and I provide a suitable semantics for personal pronouns and predicates of personal taste. In chapter 5, I show that one of the advantages of this model is its compatibility with both nonindexical contextualism and truth relativism about taste. I argue in chapters 5 and 6 that the empirical data from eavesdropping, retraction, and disagreement cases supports a relativist completion of the model, and I show in detail how to account for these phenomena on the sequenced worlds view.
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Semino, Elena. "Poems, schemata and possible worlds : text worlds in the analysis of poetry." Thesis, Lancaster University, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.238974.
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Angles, Zachary (Zachary John). "Narrative tactics for making other worlds possible." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/115724.
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Thesis: M. Arch., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2018.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "February 2018."
Includes bibliographical references.
Be they childhood games of make-believe, sophisticated literary projects, or political inventions (a "Great America") authors have taken advantage of a world-building imagination creating their own worlds, and theorizing what they were doing. From the 1960s onwards, fictional worlds were studied from a philosophical point of view, using "possible worlds" theory and modal logic, which consider the ontological status of fictional worlds, the nature of their functioning, and their relationship with the actual world. These ideas have been combined with literary theory, setting the foundation for the study of imaginary worlds. Architects and Urbanists have used facets of world-building arguably for as long as the disciplines have existed. Though modernity launched a highly conscious tradition of imagining worlds in literature and creative culture, it also stained imagination and dreaming with a connotation of frivolity and a wastefulness that was antithetical to modern projects of utility and rationality. In the later half of the twentieth century there was an increase in number of architects exploring the irrational and imaginative in defiance of the reign of rationalism. A chasm tore through the discipline: grounded and rational practitioners on one side and imaginative inventors of form, indulgently entrapped in their fantasies, on the other. World-builders have developed robust methods for producing visions for futures, pasts, and other worlds. A study of worldbuilding and narrative methods and their possible application to architectural and urban design has remained largely unaddressed. This thesis proposes methods for design and tests these methods through a case study. The case study is the city of Boston in the year 2100 being changed by many factors not least of which are the effects of sea level rise. A story has been authored, the world surrounding that story has been structured, and designs within that world have been represented. This thesis seeks to combine methods from storytelling, world-building, and scenario planning in order to allow imaginative explorations of, and design for speculative environments, in response to, and preparation for, challenging situations. And, in the end it seeks to provide tools to tell better stories and see better worlds.
by Zachary Angles.
M. Arch.
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Taylor, Jane Anne. "Transformative learning : becoming aware of possible worlds." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/28548.
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Human learning is a complex multidimensional phenomenon many aspects of which continue to elude understanding and explanation. One facet of the learning puzzle that has not been adequately explored is the role that individual consciousness plays in human learning. Adult education has been instrumental in shifting the focus in studies of learning from an emphasis on the material to be learned to an emphasis on the experience of the individual in the learning transaction. This shift in focus has brought more attention to the processes of individual consciousness as a critical factor in the learning process. In adult education a sense of urgency about the importance of broadening the concept of learning, and a growing awareness of the importance of consciousness, and changes or transformations in consciousness as aspects of a more comprehensive concept of learning, are beginning to merge.
The course of human history and culture speaks eloquently of the transformative powers of the human mind to amplify and extend knowledge by transcending what is already known. While current learning literature stresses learning as the process of facilitating changes in behaviour or the acquisition, organization, retention and retrieval of knowledge, little attention has been given to learning as a process of creative transformation of knowledge. This study arose out of a desire to explore the ramifications of transformations within the consciousness of the individual as a major aspect of learning, and to integrate literature on this topic as a means of extending understanding of learning as a transformative process.
The study began with explorations in two directions stimulated and directed by the qualitative method of constant comparative analysis. One was the development of the case study of Sara which supplied a slice of experiential data. Sara's case illustrates learning experiences from a personal point of view which emphasizes changes in consciousness as a central dynamic of those experiences. The second direction for exploration was a search of the literature for sources which might account for this type of learning. An analysis and integration of the writings of selected authors supplied the foundation for the development of a model of transformative learning. Finally, this model was applied to Sara's case as a means of clarifying her personal learning experience and illustrating the usefulness of the model as a tool for understanding learning as a process of creative transformation of consciousness.Education, Faculty of
Educational Studies (EDST), Department of
Graduate
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Fäldt, Tove. "With Worlds as Content : An investigation on Possible Worlds Semantics and its Problems." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Filosofiska institutionen, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-387428.
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Boardman, Leon. "The best or worst of all possible worlds." Thesis, University of Kent, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.413276.
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MOTLOCH, MARTIN ADAM. "ESSENTIALISM WITHOUT POSSIBLE WORLDS: OBJECTS, PROPERTIES AND ESSENCES." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2014. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=24560@1.
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PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIROCONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICO
O objetivo desse trabalho é desenvolver um essencialismo sem mundos possíveis. Alegamos que objetos ordinários são entidades complexas constituídas por entidades mais básicas como pedaços de matéria e propriedades instanciadas Os possíveis constituintes são determinados pela realidade, independentes da mente e linguagem humana, mas a constituição é convencional dependente do nosso esquema conceitual e as nossas práticas de nomeação. Consequentemente desenvolvemos uma teoria aristotélica de objetos ordinários como complexos de suas essências e da matéria que instancia essas essências. Em seguida aplicamos essa concepção de objetos para modificar a teoria da referência direta. Nessa teoria resultante, os significados de nomes próprios são as essências dos referentes desses nomes. O quadro da nossa investigação consiste numa teoria plantonista de propriedades segundo a qual as propriedades são partes integrais de uma realidade complexas sendo interconectadas com a parte concreta dessa realidade e na qual algumas propriedades podem participar em relações causais. De acordo com isso, apresentamos uma concepção atualista de modalidades na qual as modalidades ocorrem em virtude de relações de segunda ordem entre propriedades, no caso de modalidades de re em virtude de relações de segunda ordem entre essências de objetos e outras propriedades.
The aim of this study is to develop an essentialist theory without possible worlds. We claim that ordinary objects are complex entities composed of entities that are more basic like pieces of matter and instantiated properties. The possible constituents are determined by reality and mind- and language-independent, the constitution, however, is conventional dependent on our conceptual scheme and our naming practices. In consequence, we develop an Aristotelian theory of ordinary objects as complexes of their essences and the matter which instantiates these essences. We apply this conception of objects in order to modify the direct reference theory. In the resulting theory, the meanings of proper names are the essences of the bearers of the names. The theoretical frame of our investigation consists in a Platonist theory of properties according to which properties are integral parts of a complex reality connected with its concrete partand in which some properties can participate in causal relations. In accordance with this view, we present an actualist conception of modalities in which modalities obtain in virtue of second order relations between properties, in case of de re modalities in virtue of second order relations between objects essences and other properties.
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Anderson, Joseph. "The Best of All Possible Worlds Contains Evil: An Examination and Defense of Leibniz's Arguments that This Is the Best of All Possible Worlds." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2006. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1205.
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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.Bachelors
Arts and Sciences
Philosophy
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Vacariu, Gabriel History & Philosophy Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences UNSW. "Epistemologically different worlds." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. History & Philosophy, 2007. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/40631.
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A fundamental error has dominated philosophy and science since ancient times, the assumption of the existence of the "unicorn-world"-that is, the existence of one unique world. It is one of the oldest and most dominant paradigms in human thinking that has generated many pseudo-problems in philosophy and science. We can identify this thinking paradigm, the unicorn-world, in the majority of myths, theological doctrines, philosophical approaches and scientific theories. In order to avoid this error, in Part I of this thesis, I show that it is necessary to replace the unicorn-world (in which all entities, such as Gods, minds, bodies, planets, tables and micro-particles have been placed all together) with "epistemologically different worlds" (which presuppose that each class of entities forms an epistemological different world). More than three centuries ago, Descartes was aware of the impossibility of solving an "anomaly" (the mind-body problem) but did not realize that the cause of this "mystery" is the unicorn-world. The role of Kantian a priori constitutive elements (categories and pure intuitions) is extended to the epistemologically constitutive interactions among classes of epistemologically different entities that belong to epistemologically different worlds. The consequence of the existence of epistemologically different worlds is that the famous mind-body problem is a false problem or a pseudo-problem. In Part II, from the "epistemologically different worlds" perspective, I analyze notions from: (1) The philosophy of mind and cognitive science (the mind-body problem, emergence and reduction, mental causation and supervenience, levels, etc.) (2) The philosophy of science (Carnap's linguistic frameworks, Quine's and Goodman's relativity, Friedman's relative constitutive a priori principles) and the science of the twentieth century (the relationship between Einstein's theory of relatiVity and quantum mechanics, complementarity and superposition, entanglement, nonlocality and nonseparability from quantum mechanics).
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Linnemann, Mikko. "Possible worlds filmische Dialektik in den Spielfilmen von Robert Lepage." Baden-Baden Nomos, Ed. Fischer, 2010. http://d-nb.info/99924003X/04.
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Hounslow, William Eric. "A possible-worlds approach to the formalisation of #common sense'." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.359237.
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Singletary, Jason Cole. "Schaffer's Priority Monism and the Problem of Junky Possible Worlds." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1429525481.
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Hoffmann, Aviv 1964. "Actualism, singular propositions, and possible worlds : essays in metaphysics of modality." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8154.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2002.Includes bibliographical references.
My dissertation consists of three essays in the Metaphysics of Modality: In "A Puzzle about Truth and Singular Propositions," I consider two theses that seem to be true and then an argument for the conclusion that they form an inconsistent pair. One thesis is that a proposition that is singular with respect to a given object implies that the object exists. This is so because the proposition predicates something of the object. The other thesis is that some propositions are true with respect to possible worlds in which they do not exist. An example is the negation of the proposition that Socrates is wise. This proposition is true with respect to possible worlds in which Socrates does not exist, but it does not exist in those worlds. In "Actualism, Ontological Dependence, and Possible Worlds," I consider Actualism, the doctrine that every possible object is an actual object. Plantinga has argued that the actualist is committed to the existence of unexemplified essences if he analyzes statements of modality by quantifying over possible worlds and over members of their domains. I argue that the actualist is committed to the existence of unexemplified essences even if he paraphrases statements of modality by quantifying only over possible worlds and actual objects. In "Possibilism and the Nature of Actuality," I consider Possibilism, the doctrine that there are possible objects that are not actual objects.
(cont.) Possibilism seems to be a coherent ontological doctrine. It is not Meinong's doctrine that there are objects of which it is true to say that there are no such objects. If one fails to distinguish between these two doctrines, then one's attempt to refute Possibilism might amount to an attack on a blatant contradiction. I illustrate this claim by arguing that the distinction between Possibilism and Meinong's doctrine has eluded Plantinga. I then consider the view that Possibilism is a consequence of Lewis's doctrine that 'actual' is an indexical term. I also argue that the sense in which Lewis said that 'actual' is indexical is an esoteric sense of the word, not a sense it ordinarily has.
by Aviv Hoffmann.
Ph.D.
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Al-Abboodi, Muna Abdulkadhim Nima. "Women, war, and possible new worlds : utopia in H.D.'s poetry." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/39827.
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This thesis examines H.D.’s treatment of utopia, offering a new perspective both on H.D. studies and studies of utopia, which typically focus on prose. The thesis traces the chronological development of H.D.’s utopian poetry, starting with her early years of experimental Imagism in 1914 and ending with her epics in 1960. My study aims to diversify existing critical approaches to H.D. which, according to many feminist critics, are limited in their treatment of her poetry. Susan Gubar states that the “critical establishment” reads H.D.’s poetry “only one way, from the monolithic perspective of the twentieth-century trinity of imagism, psychoanalysis, and modernism” (20). My work challenges established readings of H.D.’s poetry through a distinctly utopian vision. Likewise, this thesis diversifies studies of utopia, which typically focus on prose, by analysing poetry. I provide a new approach to H.D. by reading her poetry in relation to theories of utopia offered by Michel Foucault, Zygmunt Bauman and Ernst Bloch. I argue that looking at utopia in H.D.’s work is fundamental to an understanding of her as a female poet who resists patriarchy. I contend that in her poetry H.D. creates a feminist utopia as an antidote to the dystopia of war. Her poems envision alternative spaces that counter the war-shattered world. In those “other spaces,” to use Foucault’s expression, H.D.’s women transcend the limits of their prescribed social role or tarnished historical reputation to become leaders, saviours, and world-shapers.
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Hosea, Marilyn A. "Worlds Connected and Worlds Apart: Postures and Dependencies Influencing Government-Agency Relations." Case Western Reserve University Doctor of Management / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=casedm1568628518748704.
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Crous, Andre Johan. "A certain idea of reality : possible worlds in the films of Michael Winterbottom." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/6512.
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Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation investigates the notion of realism and in particular its applicability to the visual and narrative strategies employed in eight of Michael Winterbottom’s films. Realism is a term that has strong ties to the reality of the viewer, but this reality that governs the conventions for making a judgment on a work’s realism is in constant flux. Likewise, on the side of the film’s production, any number of tactics may be deployed to increase the viewer’s sense of realism and the research undertaken here looks at a variety of approaches to the creation and assessment of realism in a film. Many of the films discussed here are depictions of past events and the tension between the realistic reconstruction of the past and the necessary artifice that is inherent in such representations are studied in the light of the theories of possible and fictional worlds. Possible worlds are constituted by states of affairs that would be possible in the actual world; in the same way, realistic representations reflect the possibilities of the actual world without necessarily being an identical copy of reality. David Lewis’s concept of counterparts plays an important role in the analysis of filmic components, especially when these components are representations of actual entities. In addition to a consideration of counterparts, this dissertation will also look at the role of the “fictional operator” which facilitates discussion about fictional truths. While the fictional operator creates counterparts of actually existing entities and films remain always already fictional, the actual world retains an important role in fiction. In postmodern cinema the viewer is encouraged to use knowledge obtained from other worlds – either actual or imaginary – so as to enhance appreciation (analytical as much as emotional) of the film even more. The concept of realism has been thoroughly problematised, but many strategies continue to connect the events of the fiction either with the “real” world or with other worlds that rival the importance of the “real” world. It is suggested that the so-called “real” world used to measure realism can refer to any world outside the realm of the particular fiction. Realism can be a product of a visual style as well as the particular development of a narrative and in both cases the viewer measures the conditions against her own experience of other worlds. The world of the film is a fictional reality that is sometimes a representation of the actual world, but the relationship between the two worlds can never be completely transparent, in spite of the efforts that many filmmakers have made in this respect.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie proefskrif word die idee van realisme bestudeer deur veral te let op die term se toepaslikheid op die visuele en narratiewe strategieë wat agt van Michael Winterbottom se films op verskillende maniere aanwend. Realisme is gekoppel aan die kyker se werklikheid, maar hierdie werklikheid wat die konvensies bepaal vir enige uitspraak oor ʼn werk se realisme is gedurig aan die verander. Op soortgelyke wyse kan ʼn film enige aantal taktieke gebruik om by te dra tot die kyker se indruk van realisme en die navorsing wat hier onderneem is kyk na ʼn verskeidenheid benaderings tot die skepping en assessering van realisme in ʼn film. Talle van die voorbeelde wat hier bespreek word is uitbeeldings van gebeure uit die verlede en die spanning tussen ʼn realistiese herskepping en die noodwendige kunsmatigheid wat daarmee saamgaan sal toegelig word deur die teorieë van moontlike wêrelde en wêrelde van fiksie (fictional worlds). Moontlike wêrelde bestaan uit stande van sake wat in die aktuele wêreld moontlik is; op dieselfde wyse weerspieël ʼn realistiese uitbeelding die moontlikhede van die aktuele wêreld sonder om noodwendig ʼn identiese afbeelding van die werklikheid te wees. David Lewis se konsep van ewebeelde (counterparts) speel ʼn groot rol in die ontleding van hierdie films se onderdele, veral wanneer die ewebeelde voorstellings van werklike entiteite is. Behalwe vir ewebeelde, sal hierdie proefskrif ook kyk na die rol van fiksie-operators (fictional operators) wat die gesprek oor fiktiewe waarhede heelwat makliker sal maak. Hoewel die fiksie-operators ewebeelde skep van entiteite wat werklik bestaan en films uiteraard altyd reeds fiktief is, kan die rol van die aktuele wêreld in fiksie nie ontken word nie. In postmoderne films word die kyker juis aangemoedig om haar kennis te gebruik wat sy uit ander wêrelde – hetsy aktueel of denkbeeldig – opgedoen het en sodoende die film (op ʼn analitiese en ʼn emosionele vlak) meer te waardeer. Selfs al is die konsep van realisme reeds behoorlik geproblematiseer, is daar steeds baie strategieë om die gebeure van die fiksie te verbind met die “regte” wêreld of met ander wêrelde wat die belang van die “regte” wêreld ondermyn. Ek stel voor dat die sogenaamde “regte” wêreld wat gebruik word om realisme te meet eindelik kan verwys na enige wêreld buite die onmiddellike fiksie; realisme kan die produk van ʼn visuele styl of die ontwikkeling van die verhaal wees en in albei gevalle meet die kyker die toestande aan haar eiesoortige ervaring van ander wêrelde. Die wêreld van die film is ʼn fiktiewe werklikheid wat soms ʼn voorstelling van die aktuele wêreld is, maar die verwantskap tussen die twee wêrelde kan nooit heeltemal deursigtig wees nie, ten spyte van talle pogings wat filmmakers al in hierdie opsig aangewend het.
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Ahmed, Nasr. "Brane-worlds and low energy heterotic M-theory." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/272.
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The current understanding of theoretical physics tells us that there exists a unique, nonperturbative quantum theory living in 11D spacetime (M-theory), from which five 10D superstring theories arise as perturbative limits Finding the explicit form of this M-theory is one of the greatest theoretical challenges of the twenty first century. In this thesis, we shed the light on some important aspects, vacuum energy, moduli stabilization and gaugino condensates in the framework of 5D heterotic M-theory. The central question we are trying to answer in this, thesis is: what is the mechanism for radion stabilization?. To answer this question we calculate the total bulk vacuum energy, which is the difference between the twisted and untwisted fermion vacuum energies. in both flat and curved spaces.
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Alexander, Ezra. "Transmedial Migration : Properties of Fictional Characters Adapted into Actual Behavior." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-92768.
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Research in the field of fictional and possible worlds examines the real and its hypothetical counterparts. The interaction between the actual and the fictional is a cause of debate within this field, and includes questions concerning the ontological status of fictional characters and their relation to reality. The following discussion will engage current positions in this debate. These include questions of reference regarding the correlation between fictional characters and actual personalities. Studying the transmedial migration of character properties from fictional worlds into the actual world engages with the possible as dependent on the actual, as well as the influence fiction can have on reality, by demonstrating how individual characters are perceived as packages of properties, some of which we identify and recognize as adaptable to our own behavior. Transmedial migration requires compatibility between different media. Accordingly, it is explained through the direct correspondence of fictional properties to actual properties, and the indirect correspondence of fictional characters to actual people. I am claiming that an interaction can be observed between different media, such as fictional worlds and the actual world, with particular emphasis on the example of fictional characters and their properties. In order to comprehend this we need a robust framework and the model that I am proposing here comprises the essential elements for such a framework. The transmedial migration of character properties from a textual medium, such as a Sherlock Holmes story, into the physical, social medium of the actual world is the action of adapting a fictional character’s package of properties into an actual person’s behavior. The agency of actual people in adapting fictional character properties to their corporal, social actions is what constitutes transmedial migration. This is a specific example of behavioral learning that recognizes certain behavior by the means of a label or trademark that is acquired from a fictional character. It is conceivable that any number of behavioral attributes, such as attitudes or habits, could be scientifically proven to have transmedially migrated by means of experimentation. Nevertheless, culturally and socially, it is only the definite identification of such character properties that substantiates my argument of transmedial migration through adaptation.
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Strickland, Lloyd H. "The best of all possible worlds : an exposition and critical examination of Leibnizian optimism." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2005. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.429956.
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Morsella, Ricardo. "Concerning the Two Worlds Theory in Plato's metaphysical epistemology." Connect to online resource, 2007. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:1442905.
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Bamunoba, Alex Samuel. "Cyclotomic polynomials (in the parallel worlds of number theory)." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/17865.
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Thesis (MSc)--Stellenbosch University, 2011.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: It is well known that the ring of integers Z and the ring of polynomials A = Fr[T] over a finite field Fr have many properties in common. It is due to these properties that almost all the famous (multiplicative) number theoretic results over Z have analogues over A. In this thesis, we are devoted to utilising this analogy together with the theory of Carlitz modules. We do this to survey and compare the analogues of cyclotomic polynomials, the size of their coefficients and cyclotomic extensions over the rational function field k = Fr(T).
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Dit is bekend dat Z, die ring van heelgetalle en A = Fr[T], die ring van polinome oor ’n eindige liggaam baie eienskappe in gemeen het. Dit is as gevolg van hierdie eienskappe dat feitlik al die bekende multiplikative resultate wat vir Z geld, analoë in A het. In hierdie tesis, fokus ons op die gebruik van hierdie analogie saam met die teorie van die Carlitz module. Ons doen dit om ’n oorsig oor die analoë van die siklotomiese polinome, hul koëffisiënte, en siklotomiese uitbreidings oor die rasionele funksie veld k = Fr(T).
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Cooper, Dominick Robert. "(In)Justice in Nonideal Social Worlds." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/78009.
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While there is an abundance of philosophical literature on justice, there is far less literature within political philosophy on the topic of injustice. I think one common assumption these approaches share is that injustice is simply the absence of justice; call this the absence thesis. This assumption becomes more peculiar juxtaposed to social and political struggle for justice, which quite commonly begins with cries of injustice. Injustice is an importantly distinct philosophical notion from justice – it can explain how justice fails to be realized in interesting and sophisticated ways, and, I argue, track our efforts to realize just social worlds, in ways that paradigmatically ideal and nonideal approaches to justice by themselves cannot. In this essay, I focus specifically on the question of how theories of justice can guide action in social worlds with systematic oppression. I ultimately argue that action-guiding theories of justice that evaluate worlds with systematic oppression must represent features of injustice. If a theory fails to represent features of injustice, it will fail to guide action in these worlds. That representation of such features is necessary gives us reason to think, in certain circumstances, that the absence thesis is false.Master of Arts
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Pettersson, Ulf. "Textmedierade virtuella världar : Narration, perception och kognition." Doctoral thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för film och litteratur (IFL), 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-29606.
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This thesis synthezises theories from intermedia studies, semiotics, Gestalt psychology, cognitive linguistics, cognitive psychology, cognitive poetics, reader response criticism, narratology and possible worlds-theories adjusted to literary studies. The aim is to provide a transdisciplinary explanatory model of the transaction between text and reader during the reading process resulting in the reader experiencing a mental, virtual world. Departing from Mitchells statement that all media are mixed media, this thesis points to Peirce’s tricotomies of different types of signs and to the relation between representamen (sign), object and interpretant, which states that the interpretant can be developed into a more complex sign, for example from a symbolic to an iconic sign. This is explained in cognitive science by the fact that our perceptions are multimodal. We can easily connect sounds and symbolic signs to images. Our brain is highly active in finding structures and patterns, matching them with structures already stored in memory. Cognitive semantics holds that such structures and schematic mental images form the basis for our understanding of concepts. In cognitive linguistics Lakoff and Johnsons theories of conceptual metaphors show that our bodily experiences are fundamental in thought and language, and that abstract thought is concretized by a metaphorical system grounded in our bodily, spatial experiences. Cognitive science has shown that we build situation models based on what the text describes. These mental models are simultaneously influenced by the reader’s personal world knowledge and earlier experiences. Reader response-theorists emphasize the number of gaps that a text leaves to the reader to fill in, using scripts. Eye tracking research reveals that people use mental imaging both when they are re-describing a previously seen picture and when their re-description is based purely on verbal information about a picture. Mental spaces are small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk. A story is built up by a large number of such spaces and the viewpoint and focus changes constantly. There are numerous possible combinations and relations of mental spaces. For the reader it is important to separate them as well as to connect them. Mental spaces can also be blended. In their integration network model Fauconnier and Turner describe four types of blending, where the structures of the input spaces are blended in different ways. A similar act of separation and fusion is needed dealing with different diegetic levels and focalizations, the question of who tells and who sees in the text. Ryan uses possible worlds-theories from modal logic to describe fictional worlds as both possible and parallel worlds. While fictional worlds are comparable to possible worlds if seen as mental constructions created within our actual world, they must also be treated as parallel worlds, with their own actual, reference world from which their own logic stems. As readers we must recenter ourselves into this fictional world to be able to deal with states of affairs that are logically impossible in our own actual world. The principle of minimal departure states that during our recentering, we only make the adjustments necessary due to explicit statements in the text.
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Sculos, Bryant William. "Worlds Ahead?: On the Dialectics of Cosmopolitanism and Postcapitalism." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3195.
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This dissertation argues that the major theories of global justice (specifically within the cosmopolitan tradition) have missed an important aspect of capitalism in their attempts to deal with the most pernicious effects of the global economic system. This is not merely a left critique of cosmopolitanism (though it is certainly that as well), but its fundamental contribution is that it applies the insights of Frankfurt School Critical Theorist Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics to offer an internal critique of cosmopolitanism. As it stands, much of the global justice and cosmopolitanism literature takes global capitalism as an unsurpassable and a foundationally unproblematic system, often ignoring completely the relationship between the psycho-socially conditioned ideological aspects of capitalism and the horizon of achievable politics and social development. Using the philosophies and social theories of Adorno and Erich Fromm, I argue that there is a crucial psycho-social dimension to capitalism, or capitalistic mentality—represented in and functionally reproduced by transnational capitalism—that undermines the political aspirations of normative theories of cosmopolitanism, on their own terms.
The project concludes with an exploration of Marxist, neo-Marxist, and post-Marxist theories as a potential source of alternatives to address the flaws within cosmopolitanism with respect to its general acceptance and under-theorizing of capitalism. The conclusion reached here is that even these radical approaches fail to take into account the near-pervasive influence of capitalism on the minds of radicals and activists working for progressive change or simply reject the potentials contained in existing avenues for global political and economic change (something which the cosmopolitan theories explored in earlier chapters do not do). Based again on the work of Adorno and Fromm, this dissertation argues that the best path forward, practically and theoretically, is by engaging cosmopolitanism and neo-/post-Marxism productively around this concept of the capitalistic mentality, building towards a praxeological theory of postcapitalist cosmopolitanism framed by a negative dialectical resuscitation of the concepts of class struggle and unlimited democracy. This postcapitalist cosmopolitanism emphasizes non-exploitative economic and political relations, cooperation, compassion, sustainability, and a participatory-democratic civic culture.
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Childs, Mark. "Learners' experience of presence in virtual worlds." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2010. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4516/.
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This thesis explores participants' experiences of presence in virtual worlds as a specific case of mediated environments, and the factors that support that experience of presence, with the aim of developing practice when using these technologies in learning and teaching. The thesis begins with a framework that was created to bring together concepts from a range of disciplines that describe presence and factors that contribute to presence. Organising categories within the framework were drawn from a blend of Activity Theory and Communities of Practice. Five case studies in Second Life (preceded by a pilot study employing webconferencing) were conducted in order to investigate learners' experiences in these environments. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered from these cases. The data from the separate cases were analysed using a cross-case synthesis and the role of presence, and the factors that support it, were identified. An additional strand of investigation established a typology of different forms of resistance by students to learning in virtual worlds. The findings of the study were that an experience of presence is strongly linked to students' satisfaction with the learning activity. This experience of presence was more linked to students' preparedness or ability to engage with the environment than with technological limitations. Some students' resistance to learning in virtual worlds were informed by values they held about technology, but others appeared to display an inability to experience embodiment through their avatar. The experience of presence appeared to develop over time. This can be interpreted as stages in students' development of a virtual body image, body schema and virtual identity. Different learning activities are more appropriate to different stages in this development. The thesis concludes with a suggested model for supporting students' development of presence. The implications of these findings for educators and for further research are discussed.
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Dearden, Richard W. "Learning and planning in structured worlds." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape3/PQDD_0020/NQ56531.pdf.
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DeWald, Rebecca Maria. "Possible worlds : textual equality in Jorge Luis Borges's (pseudo-)translations of Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2016. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/7183/.
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This thesis re-evaluates the relationship between original text and translation through an approach that assumes the equality of source and target texts. This is based on the translation strategy expressed in the work of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges and theoretical approaches by Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault, as well as exponents of Possible World Theory. Rather than considering what may be lost in translation, this thesis focuses on why we insist on maintaining a border between the textual phenomena ‘translation’ and ‘original’ and argues for a mutually enriching dialogue between a text and its translation. The opening chapter investigates marginal cases of translation and determines where one form (original) ends and the other (translation) begins. The case studies derive from the anthology Cuentos breves y extraordinarios (edited by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares) and include ‘pseudotranslations’: texts presented as translations even though no linguistic transfer precedes them. Another example is Borges’s self-translation of his Spanish poem ‘Mañana’ into German as ‘Südlicher Morgen’ for the Expressionist poet Kurt Heynicke. Although an original text, the pseudotranslation is judged as a translation, problematizing the boundary between the two. Since its perception changes over time, it unsettles the idea of the stable text by positing a text in progress. The analysis of the effects of the translation is supported by a discussion of Michel Foucault’s categorization expressed in Les mots et les choses (1966). Translations are regarded as coins, which gain value through their ability to represent, and create heterotopias: potentially existing non-places, which escape logic and thereby create an ‘uneasy laughter.’ Heterotopias are based on anti-logical orders, exemplified in the organisation of Antología de la literatura fantástica, collaboratively edited by Borges, Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo in 1940. This organisation invites an interpretation based on resemblance rather than comparison, the latter of which always results in the production and reproduction of hierarchies. In Chapter Two, I uncover the fraudulent assumption that an original is a stable text. I make recourse to Walter Benjamin’s definition of origin in ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’ (1923) as ‘the eddy in the stream of becoming’, and André Lefevere’s notion of the refracted text, explaining that our first encounters with a classic text are mostly made through abridged, altered, and interpreted versions. Collaborative work also unsettles the idea of the single author as source and guarantor of authenticity, exemplified through examples of Borges and Bioy Casares’s collaboration, and Borges’s collaborative translations with Norman Thomas di Giovanni. I elaborate on Possible World Theory (PWT) following Marie-Laure Ryan and Ruth Ronen, explaining key terms and concepts and showing that PWT offers an alternative to thinking about the relationship of original text and translation as hierarchical. PWT can be employed to consider source text and target text to be possible, parallel versions of a fictional world. The findings lead to a link between authenticity and the different reception of original and translated texts. I note that the term ‘authenticity’, often used in reference to the original, also has ‘murderous’ connotations. Applied to a text, ‘inauthenticity’ might therefore be a more helpful term in discussing its ‘afterlife’ (Fortleben; Benjamin) as an inauthentic text. An effective way of ensuring a text can be read as ‘inauthentic’ is to dissimulate its origin and relations, whilst also unsettling the authority of the author and translator. The theoretical examination of hierarchies and categorization is then illustrated in case studies analysing Borges’s contrasting translations of works by Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka. Chapter Three focuses on translations of Orlando and A Room of One’s Own attributed to Borges. While it remains uncertain whether Borges did in fact translate Woolf’s texts himself, the notion of ‘translatorship’ comes into focus. The continuation of claiming Borges as the translator serves to aid the publication of the translations by making use of the famous translator’s name. I give an overview over the publishing environment in Argentina of the 1930s into which the Woolf texts were translated, with particular focus on the readership of the publishing house Sur. I thereby foreground Victoria Ocampo’s particular interest in having Woolf translated into Spanish, since Ocampo considered Woolf a role model for feminism. Feminist discussions show parallels with the way in which translations and original texts are separated. Borges’s Orlando furthermore triggered controversy concerning his handling of gender issues. I offer a reading of the text along the lines of Feminist Translation Studies, as expressed by Sherry Simon, Luise von Flotow and Lori Chamberlain, amongst others. I argue that Borges’s translation can be read ‘inauthentically’ as fidelity becomes a movable factor. I regard the translations of Orlando and A Room of One’s Own attributed to Borges as texts translated in a feminist way as they offer many possible worlds of interpretation and much undecidability. The notion of ‘translatorship’ is picked up again in the final Chapter Four, as it applies equally to the translation of Franz Kafka’s ‘Die Verwandlung’ as ‘La metamorfosis.’ Since there are different versions of ‘La metamorfosis,’ the quest for the translator also questions where ‘translation’ ends and ‘editing’ begins. The popularity of Borges’s version might furthermore be particularly linked to this uncertainty, as I argue that the veneration of Kafka’s work is, at least in part, due to the fragmentary nature in which his work survived. This incompletion enables many possible interpretations of his texts, which thereby appear as perfect pieces of literature since they, like Foucault’s coin, are uncorrodable and have the ability to represent, much like inauthentic texts. The ‘inauthentic’ literary treatment of translating in collaboration, as is the case when Borges and Bioy Casares translate ‘Cuatro reflexiones’, ‘Josefina la cantora’, ‘La verdad sobre Sancho Panza’ and ‘El silencio de las sirenas’ is hence particularly adequate for these fragments. The translations in collaboration, besides undermining the authorial genius of the single author, also feature particular destructions of the perfection of the original. The concluding chapter summarises the findings concerning the questions as to why there should be a hierarchy between the reception of original texts and translations, why this hierarchy is so persistent, and what alternatives may be offered instead. I demonstrate how the selected case studies are exemplary of alternative approaches to Translation Studies and to what effect PWT and Borges have been helpful in pursuing this approach. I then suggest further routes of research, including: an increased visibility of translations in academic disciplines, through publishing books and reviews; further study on the translations of Argentine literature into an Anglo-American context and the ‘decolonized’ effect this could have; and an update of Feminist Translation Studies to expand it to Transgender Translation Studies. I finally suggest that the uncertain and unsettling effect brought about by translation in its creation of multiple worlds should be embraced as a way of reading and writing inauthentically.
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Gingold, Chaim. "Miniature gardens and magic crayons : games, spaces and worlds." Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/17671.
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Amani, Aslan. "Is democratic multiculturalism really possible?" Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/643/.
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This thesis is an examination of the interplay between democratic norms and principles defining philosophical multiculturalism. Its most general aim is to find an answer to the following question concerning the possibility of democratic multiculturalism; do democracies adopt multicultural policies at the expense of their democratic credentials or are the two compatible with each other? The argument emerges from the interaction of two strong threads that run through the thesis. First, the thesis engages with three prevalent views on how democracies should react to the facts of disagreement – count heads, turn difference into a positive resource, and design procedures to maximize traditional values lying in the triangle of freedom, equality, and fraternity. In response, I offer a fourth view of democracy that combines minimalism with normativity. Normative minimalist democracy (NMD) holds that these three views are unable to appreciate the respective normative weights of dissensus and consensus, both of which have an ineliminable place in the modern democratic practices and their normative underpinnings. The second thread responds to another trichotomy – the three supposedly democratic challenges that philosophers of multiculturalism have brought up over the last two decades (as well as to the corresponding liberal-egalitarian counter-responses), which respectively draw attention to the importance of recognition, self-rule, and inclusion. With respect to these challenges and counter-challenges, the dissertation argues that both supporters and opponents of multiculturalism have democratic aspirations; and democratic response to multiculturalism should not be overshadowed by either unfounded optimism about the prospects of a substantive consensus fair to all previously marginalized minorities, nor by pessimism about the relapse into the preEnlightenment world due to the so-called return of parochialism. In between these two positions lies a more democratic response to multiculturalism – one that neither celebrates the role of culture as a unique vehicle of human fulfilment, nor dismisses it as a remnant of the past. The argument for seeking a middle ground arises in part out of frustration with the two extremes. Supplementing this critical aspect of the argument is a more constructive strand that explores what the individualist core of democracy implies with respect to political diversity in the form of disagreeing groups. Although NMD leaves room for a theory of groups substantially thinner than the one its multiculturalist critiques require because it is more clearly constrained by democracy’s individualist commitments, it is still thicker than the one standard liberal egalitarianism allows.