The twofold purpose of this study was to ground a model of Lens Meaning in the literature of the Fine Arts and Social Sciences and to use that term as a referent in evaluating three Media Studies curricula. Lens Meaning is a term derived from a variety of sources, particularly Peirce, whose semiotic theory described three systems of signs used as terms on one axis of a matrix or model by which Lens Meaning can be described. These terms are: "index", (...) "icon", and "symbol". DeLauretis' expanded understanding of another system of signs described by Peirce, interpretants, is the foundation for the three terms on the other axis of the matrix. Those terms, which describe interpretation or response, are: "emotional", "energetic", and "habit changing". These, and other terms identified in the literature, provided a conceptual model that might be applied to the analysis and evaluation of programs of Media Studies, and similar documents. Three Media Studies programs were selected for study: from Western Australia, Ontario, and Scotland. Application of the model permitted conclusions to be drawn on the extent to which current issues of an ideological and sociopolitical nature were addressed by these programs. It was concluded that the model achieved the purposes required of it and that it may be of further utility for educators. (shrink)

The general purpose of this study was to examine transformations of human agency in natural contexts. Existing theoretical formulations have primarily been confined to laboratory investigations. Moreover, the principles generated by such theories have not been validated beyond the laboratory setting. With this purpose in mind, there were two immediate aims of the study. The first aim was to contribute to counselling theory by assessing five prominent theories of human agency and providing a basis from which to potentially establish more (...) adequate theoretical formulations. The second aim was to contribute to counselling practice by providing concrete information and a more informed basis through which to enhance agency in clients. A multiple case study design integrating intensive interviewing and Q-methodology was utilized for the study. Ten individuals, five women and five men, ranging in age from 28 to 64, were identified through a network of contacts for participation in the study. Based upon convergence of qualitative evidence from interviews and quantitative evidence from Q-sorts, rich, detailed narrative accounts of transformation were constructed for each individual. Each account was validated by the individual for whom each was written and by an independent reviewer. Through a comparative analysis of the ten diverse accounts of transformation, extensive commonality was identified. Twenty-two common themes were extracted from the accounts that portrayed significant features of the transformation. Based on these themes, an abstract story of the common pattern revealed in the transformation was plotted. Individual aspects of each of the theories of agency were validated as well as qualified in some important ways. In addition, the results extended these theories in three main ways. First, the results indicated that transformations of human agency were complex wholes that involved a configuration of features rather than any one or two isolated features. Second, the findings indicated that context played a critical role in transformations of agency. And third, the results emphasized the important role of powerful emotions in the process of transformation. The results of this study also generated a beginning holistic portrait of transformation which has implications for counsellors in terms of understanding and facilitating transformations of agency in clients. (shrink)

A perennial problem in moral philosophy concerns the formulation of an acceptable account of 'right action'. Act utilitarianism is one popular account, and much of its initial appeal involves the fact that it is taken to have practical application. However, it is the very attempt to apply act utilitarianism which raises questions about its tenability. These concerns become acute in the face of uncertainty about what constitutes tenability with respect to a moral theory. These issues relate to questions of methodology. (...) One question concerning methodology involves the status of intuitions in assessing moral theories and principles. Chapter one, Moral Methodology and Intuitions, examines the role of intuitions in theory assessment and, in particular, whether it is possible to avoid totally their employment. This question is explored with reference to the views of Peter Singer and John Rawls. The possibility of using the distinction between meta-ethics and normative ethics to avoid reliance on intuitions is considered. Chapter two, A Formulation of AU, utilizes the distinctions among agent, action and motive to present act utilitarianism in the strongest possible light. This involves discussion of whether it is more plausible to understand act utilitarianism in terms of actual or probable consequences. Finding neither account satisfactory, a fundamental question relevant to both models is then explored—what is the purpose of moral classification itself? With certain provisions, however, we return in the end to an actual consequences model for purposes of further exploration. Chapter three, AU and the Issue of Self-defeatingness, examines the issue of whether act utilitarianism is self-defeating. While it is not strictly self-defeating, act utilitarianism does incorporate a certain 'brinkmanship' with valuable moral norms which damages its plausibility. The distinction between decision-making procedures and rightness-making characteristics becomes important at this point. Act utilitarianism's account of moral responsibility seems to reduce the moral agent to a utility conductor and maximizer. Chapter four, The AU Moral Agent: Utility Machine, focuses on this problem, as well as related issues concerning basic values and the acts/omissions distinction. Chapter five, AU and Moral Responsibility, examines Bernard Williams' criticisms of act utilitarianism in terms of its implications for negative responsibility and integrity. Two different interpretations by prominant philosophers of Williams' critical suggestions about utilitarianism and integrity are examined and both are. found to be inadequate. Chapter six, AU and Integrity, explores further the nature of act utilitarianism's threat to integrity. Act utilitarianism's construal of moral agency threatens the personal integrity of the moral agent by requiring the sacrifice of personal projects and commitments, and, with them, the near abandonment of the personal self. Since morality is supposed to be for persons, this is a crippling objection. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to describe staff nurses' perceptions of their power bases in their work environment. Power, the capacity to set conditions, make decisions and take action that influences others, is an increasingly important issue within the nursing profession. In the nursing literature, nurses have been encouraged to consider the power to influence nursing care as an attainable goal and a necessary element in the change process. Empowering staff nurses may become a strategy for coping with the (...) nursing manpower shortage. However, research about nursing power has focused on the nurse manager and little is written about staff nurses' perception of their power. A grounded theory research design was used to collect and analyze data. Data were collected through interviews of nine staff nurses in a 369 bed British Columbia community hospital. A comparative content analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings showed that the staff nurse participants were able to recognize certain factors in their work environment that impacted on their sense of power. The nature of nurses' work and the communication of information were found to be the most significant factors. The communication of information was perceived to positively influence nurses' sense of power, while the nature of nurses' work was found to limit nurses' sense of power. Nurses' lack of control over client care was found to contribute to a sense of powerlessness and was linked to units using team nursing. The eight power bases outlined in Randolph's framework, were useful as a basis for describing the staff nurses' perceptions of their organizational power bases. The staff nurses studied were found to have the most affinity for referent, expert, information, and connection power bases. These nurses were found to have the least affinity for reward, coercion, legitimate, and resource power bases. Primary nursing was found to enhance legitimate power while team nursing was found to enhance connection power. The source of power most frequently mentioned by the nurse participants was personal power in relation to oneself. This did not fit into Randolph's framework and was not well defined. This has implications for nursing since support for the professional nature of nurses' work was found to strenghthen nurses' sense of personal power. Knowledge about the perceptions described by the subjects in this investigation provides information to assist nurses' to identify power bases that they may not recognize. As well, increased understanding about staff nurses' perceptions of power should enable nursing administration to identify strategies for retaining nurses and enhancing client care. (shrink)

Most social practices nave some purpose or another to fulfil that justifies their existence. Indeed, we explain many formal and informal rules by reference to their particular raison d'etre. The reason for doing something, then, is clearly of major importance in considering the nature of the relevant practice as a whole. If this is true of informal social practices it must also follow for the legal system. The thesis of this essay, therefore, is that law is a purposeful activity and (...) that such purposes have a very significant function within the system of law. Particular emphasis is placed upon the role that purpose plays in the decision-making process. It is argued to be a part of the law itself as opposed to some extra-legal criterion that may he taken into account. The law is not, in fact, neutral as to goals. The first chapter constitutes a study of the major theories of law in relation to their respective interpretations of the function of goals in the legal system. The schools of Positivism and Natural Law are examined as representing the polar positions in the debate. Then the intermediate standpoints of the Sociological jurisprudents and other writers are discussed. The basic issue here is whether it is at all possible to attribute an important role to purpose in this field. In chapter 2 a classification of goals is presented with a discussion of how it was derived and the problems that arose in doing so. If we are able to use goals in some way in the decisionmaking process it is necessary to look at various methods by which this can be done. This task is the subject of the final chapter. The problems involved in using goals and especially the fundamental difficulty of identifying the goals are examined. Some of the theories discussed in the first chapter are re-examined and evaluated. The possible limits upon the practicality of using purpose in the ways discussed have not yet become clear. However, it does appear that there is great potential for using purpose in the decision process. It offers a means for resolving many disputes and, frequently, even hard cases may be settled by looking to the purposes of the rules concerned. The exercise of drawing up a classification of goals has proved to be a practical method of assessing the viability of using purpose and a valuable indicator as to the major drawbacks to doing so successfully. (shrink)

This dissertation defends extended cognitivism: a recently emerging view in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science that claims that an individual's cognitive processes or states sometimes extend beyond the boundaries of their brain or their skin to include states and processes in the world. I begin the defence of this thesis through a background discussion of several foundational issues in cognitive science: the general character of cognitive behaviour and cognitive processes, as well as the nature and role of representation (...) as it is standardly taken to figure in cognition. I argue in favour of the widely held view that cognition is best characterised as involving information processing, and that carriers of information are ineliminable components of the most distinctively human and powerful forms of cognition. Against this background the dissertation argues in stages for successively stronger claims regarding the explanatory role of the external world in cognition. First to be defended is the claim that cognition is often embedded in one's environment. I develop this claim in terms of what I call 'parainformation': roughly, information that shapes how we tackle a cognitive task by enabling the extraction of task-relevant information. Proceeding then to the defence of extended cognitivism, I draw most significantly on the work of Andy Clark. In outline, and in general following Clark, it is argued that states and processes occurring beyond the skin of the cognitive agent sometimes play the same explanatory role as internal processes that unquestionably count as cognitive. I develop this claim in two versions of differing strength: firstly, in a general way without commitment to the representational character of extended cognition, and secondly in a specifically representational version with special attention to intentional explanation. Against each of these versions of extended cognitivism are ranged a number of criticisms and objections, many of which stem from the work of Fred Adams and Ken Aizawa. The dissertation examines these objections and rejects each of them in turn. (shrink)

"The Falling Scholar - Essays in the Outside" is a collection of six essays that explore the effects and affects of crisis in the contexts of academic writing. Crisis, from the Greek root word, Krinein, means "to turn;" and is applied in a variety of historical settings that allow for the writing itself to turn towards writing. As the writer, I am always in a position of turning towards, or away from the crisis as a site of learning, or of (...) turning the crisis into something else. These essays constitute a performance-writing that attempts to expose new possibilities in meanings and interpretations through "turning," and for revealing the subject-in-process. The subject-in- process is an identity that flows in and out of each effort to address the crisis: whether personal, social, or political, each crisis is an event for turning towards what might not yet be written about how we understand ourselves as authors of our bodies. These essays are invested with a writer's vigilance, attending ceaselessly to the ways writing can refuse, deny, displace, disguise, conceal, and protect what might be revealed in writing. By locating this work in the university, I have tried to explicate the conflicts and contradictions that arise for women who are writing within the institutionalized discourses that originate in a historically misogynist vernacular. The "poetic conscience" is foregrounded as what might assist in writing outside of the traditional academic language practices, and each essay contains stories that work to disclose what is so often closed or forbidden by university writing systems. It is a writing that subjects the reader to the process of the writer's learning to write as an intellectual and as an artist - an initial effort to perform intellectual artistry as a passionate practice, and as a performance of the passionate intellectual. (shrink)

Metaphors of "journey" or "rootlessness" are often used to describe movements of people across cultural and social spaces, and physical geographies. Such journeys whilst revealing stories that speak of a people's voice, are rarely seen as embodying an implicit quest for a narrative unity with a teleology and pedagogy, sui generis. This inquiry focuses upon the narrative journey of one such community of "travellers," the Indian Ismailis, who left their timeworn homeland in the North Western region of the Indian Subcontinent (...) at the end of the nineteenth century and travelled to colonial Eastern Africa to make the land their new home. In the early 1970' s, however, political unrest in this now "postcolonial" region prompted the succeeding generations of the earlier pioneers to once again uproot their African home and undertake yet another journey, this time towards the so-called modern societies of Canada and other Western countries. This historical and often turbulent intergenerational voyage of over a hundred years is also a continuous journey of a modern selfhood in aporia as it experiences and traverses the various institutions, practices, and milieus of modernity, while attempting to engage with or update its own biographical narrative. Using the important and primary genre of shared conversations implicit within a narrative and hermeneutical inquiry, this project acts as witness and delves into the narratives of a diverse group of individuals from four generations of these travellers. It is proposed that in these intergenerational conversations and stories lie experiences and expressions of praxis that also reveal or point towards moral enablements of practices and virtues, and arguments that make present a "living tradition." This tradition, it is felt, can act as a significant and inescapable horizon - a robust historical consciousness - from which a modern selfhood in aporia can once again begin to update its own narrative as part of a continuous story of a community with a teleology, and which the current and future generations of these "travellers" can recognize, argue, update, and ultimately possess as they venture purposefully into the community's shared future. (shrink)

This dissertation works and is worked by the chiasmus in-between the language of space and the space of language. Fragmented narratives of live experience from the everyday life of pedagogy are juxtaposed with theoretical traces from Lacanian psychoanalysis and Derridean deconstruction. The text of the work labours with and against the grain of hegemonic inscriptions in multiple sites of pedagogy - tarrying within uncertainty - on the tremulous grounds of a 'third' discourse. Located always already within the materiality of language, (...) the work labours within spaces of provocative dissonance in-between theoretical positionings. Readings of spatiality from architecture and human geography intersect and disseminate with readings of language from post/colonial ethnography and cultural studies. Rereadings resonate within the vibrancy of a growing literature on writing otherwise within the spaces of interdisciplinarity. Reading outside the literature of pedagogy infuses the inside writing as boundaries are disturbed and subjectivities destabilized. Research is rewritten as messy text as/in a rigour of ruins in the gaps and intervals of the spaces in-between. As semiotic tropes of language shift toward performativity, the text ex-scribes in order to disrupt the circumscriptions of normative praxis. The text seeks invocations for risking radical responsibilities in the everyday experience of living pedagogy - in the tensionaliry of the always already and the not-yet there. The work of this dissertation labours beneath and beyond the text in semiotic dispositions - through an Aokian re-reading of Lacanian metonymy for pedagogy - a doubling movement of metonymy/metaphor in tropic moments - within a 'third' discourse generating openings for transformation. Excentric circumscriptions dis/appear into the space of no-thingness - a site of ambiguity that is both thing and nothing and yet neither thing nor nothing - an ongoing response to an invitation to write a paper/not paper. A writing that tarries within its inscription - ghosted by a reading relationship with itself. A writing that seeks a jouissance of vacancy in tracking the spectrality of paper ghosts. The possibilities for transformation happen in chiasmatic passages from trope to performativity through re-readings and mis-readings. From a working text emerge articulations of a radical rhetoricity evoking ongoing labour from the para-sitic spatial punctuations of AuthorTextReader. (shrink)

Private family garden + phenomenology + deconstructivism; alias landscape design cooking a la Czech is a thesis project the main purpose of which was to answer authors questions concerning the practical use of the two design approaches applied to project for a real site through a development of designs driven by the principles of the respective styles/movements. Emphasis were paid to the influence the movements have on architectural and garden design. Second aim was to investigate the appropriateness and usefulness of (...) designing through a model creation in a miniaturised simulation of the real situation in three dimensions. Following, and the last step, was to investigate the effectiveness of the model to communicate and truthfully represent/simulate the impact of the proposed design interventions. Throughout the work on the project, stages and consecutive steps taken were recorded to document the process. Development of the project was divided into several phases. First, suitable site was chosen and data related to the property gathered. Second, phenomenology and deconstructivism had been studied - mainly through looking at precedent design work and development of visual annotated analysis. Third step, happening simultaneously with second, was creation of a model simulating the current state and conditions on the site. Fourth, preliminary design proposals were developed. As a reflection on step four, design guidelines were developed to provide more steady ground/base for development of a coherent and better focused final design, which was the product of step six. In the seventh step, a rough model of the final design was developed and had been gradually refined into a stage of a final model with minor changes to the design elements occurring throughout the process. The changes were executed as they became desirable after the three dimensional simulation of the proposed design was developed and a higher level of understanding of the spatial relations was achieved. In conclusion, a high effectiveness of the model "to tell the story" was observed and emphasized even further by digital photo-documentation targeted to "draw the viewer into the model space." Lessons about time demands for the model creation were learned and better level of understanding the way deconstructivism and phenomenology reflect in design work was achieved. (shrink)

Due to its pervasive affinity for conceptual abstractions, German criminal law has been said to suffer from a rationalist hubris that leads to the formulation of artificial rules and lacks respect for the realities of life. The following study will examine this hypothesis with respect to one area of German criminal law that is particularly characterized by an abstract, conceptual way of thinking: the area of what in Germany is called "offences against personal freedom". A case where a store detective (...) suggested to a 16 year old female shoplifter that he would abstain from making a larceny report to the police if she engaged in sexual intercourse with him has caused a lot of debate in German criminal law as to the question of whether the detective infringed the shoplifter's "personal freedom" in a way prohibited by criminal law. This debate will be presented and contrasted with the approach Canadian criminal law would be likely to adopt had the case occurred in Canada. The thesis adopts a comparative, analytical approach that focuses on law reform: • comparative, because the question of whether German criminal law does lack respect for the realities of life will be examined by comparing German legal reasoning with Anglo-Canadian legal reasoning. • analytical, because when exploring what German and Canadian law regarding "offences against personal freedom" is, the focus will be on familiar, formal techniques of legal reasoning, such as those which draw on legislative texts, legislative history, underlying principles, academic commentary, fundamental values in the constitution, and theoretical concerns. • law reform, because the question is explored of whether German criminal law can learn from Canadian criminal law how to be more open to taking varying social locations of people affected by criminal law into account. In particular it is asked whether one can reconcile the traditional German conceptual approach that promises certainty of the law and the Canadian contextual approach that is better able to be attentive to equality as a fundamental right. It will be argued that such a reconciliation of approaches is possible and consists in a method that might be called egalitarian conceptualism. This approach unites the advantages of conceptual, abstract legal reasoning with the advantages of contextual thinking by merging equality as a fundamental concept with the existing conceptual framework of criminal liability. The principle "in dubio pro aequalitate" will be added to the principle "in dubio pro libertate". (shrink)

In this dissertation I provide an ethnographic account of the testimony of four expert witnesses who appeared before the Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada as they described the production of scientific knowledge and the role that knowledge played in the struggle to protect the blood supply from being contaminated by AIDS during the early 1980's. In doing so, I bring together the experts' testimony with contemporary documents gathered by the Commission and interviews I conducted with participants (...) in the proceedings. Using insights drawn from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and history, I explore what the witnesses' accounts reveal about their understandings of their professional world and its relationships with other worlds, especially that of public health policy making. The Krever Inquiry offered a valuable opportunity for carrying out such an investigation. It provided a site where science was not only used, it was talked about. The Inquiry invited those involved in the blood system in the early 1980's to reflect upon and explain the beliefs and actions which surrounded one of the worst public health disasters in Canadian history and it asked the witnesses how similar catastrophes could be avoided in the future. As a result, many of the issues addressed at the hearings reflect matters of current concern in public health and medicine. The Inquiry addressed difficult issues surrounding the nature of scientific knowledge and its application in health decision-making and policy formulation. This study, therefore, may be of interest to those dealing with the problems surrounding uncertainty and the management of public health crises. It may also be of interest to those dealing with conflicts rising out of the intersection of different worlds of experience and practice, as well as to those involved in the current initiatives to both make medical and public health institutions more proactive, and inclusive, and public health decision-making more transparent. (shrink)

Our world is experiencing a crisis of unsustainability with ecological, socioeconomic, and existential dimensions. Thus, planning for the transition to sustainability is a challenge requiring transformation of the dorrunant cultural paradigm. I address this problem of planning between cultural paradigms by examining the discourse between First Nations Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Western Science, and identify lessons that contribute to a sounder epistemological basis for planning theory and practice. To link planning theory, sustainability and TEK, I combined literature reviews, interviews and (...) lessons from my experience with First Nations. I derived a cross-cultural analytical framework based on epistemology, cosmology and ontology, and applied it to planning theory, case studies of the Scientific Panel for Sustainable Forest Practices in Clayoquot Sound and my own professional work. Planning for sustainability must address multiple dimensions. My approach includes biophysical, social and cultural capital, postulating that greater social and cultural capital could decrease consumption of biophysical capital. In this framework "ECO" addresses cultural capital. My analysis of TEK reveals more than just "knowledge," rather a way of life which generates knowledge. I coined the term TEK-Systems to refer to the social and cultural capital, and methodological features of these lotowledge-generating systems. Applying ECO reveals philosophical elements of TEK, that are neglected in the literature. TEKS combine empirical knowledge with other ways of knowing offering alternative models of reality to the cultural mainstream. The Scientific Panel recognized all significant features of TEKS and ECO in my framework, and employed Nuu-Chah-Nulth TEK protocol in their planning model. Various forms of knowledge from wholly different philosophical origins informed complex planning and decision- making process with consensus outcomes. Similarly, the most significant lessons from my professional application was that respect, cultural framing, and community involvement are key professional tools. Planning between cultural paradigms requires recognizing different knowledge systems; including different ways of knowing strengthens planning for sustainability. This approach establishes new terrain for planning theory. It requires inclusive planning and decision- making processes which foster caring, respect and commitment. Enhancing social and cultural capital provides community and spiritual resources for sustainability. Planners need specialized framing to work in these areas. (shrink)

Unsatisfied with critical responses to Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations?" this dissertation attempts to trace two central elements of his argument. First, "On Barbarians" traces the evolution of the civilized/ barbarian dichotomy from its origins in the nineteenth century to its recent incarnations in International Relations theory. The relevance of Europe's imperial heritage is emphasized, along with certain thematic threads in popular discourse: demography, surveillance, and the distinction between popular and elite culture. The ubiquitous self/other dichotomy, which is central to political (...) identity, has been understood in European imperial discourse to mean European civilization and barbaric others. This rhetoric remains powerful, even in current IR discourse. By reinscribing this civilized/barbarian dichotomy, Huntington in effect uses International Relations theory as a form of identity politics. Second, this dissertation analyzes the presence of culture and identity in the discipline of International Relations theory. Despite specific empirical considerations, Huntington's underlying interest in culture and identity is well-founded, which this dissertation attempts to demonstrate using material from the history of International Relations, post-colonial, and critical theorists. In sum, "On Barbarians" illustrates the critical benefit of studying culture and identity to LR through a critical examination of the civilized/barbarian discourse. (shrink)

This thesis accepts the premise that something is amiss in international political theory but, in contrast to numerous recent works, aims to provide more than a eulogy, lament, or nostalgic retrospective on the field. Instead, it seeks to get at the root cause of the problem. I argue that the perennial malaise of international theory is a problem of discipline, in both the ordinary and scientific sense. First, the field is in the grip of unprecedented theoretical tumult, its practitioners in (...) danger of drifting out of familiar currents into a boundless sea of relativism. Second, the scientific status of the discourse remains an issue of concern to many scholars. But the first group of "theorists" promise us little more than diversity, while the second look for theoretical shelter in the false haven of empirical science. The crisis of international theory is thus inflamed by a misrepresented debate in which either too much emphasis is placed on consensus, or too great a virtue made of difference. Returning to the insights of E. H. Carr, I reconceptualize the problem of theoretical consensus in international relations as an issue that is inherently irresolvable and, at the same time, workable. The thesis argues against the view that international relations cannot achieve secure status as a discipline without attaining, or at least aspiring to construct, a global empirical theory. Following Carr, I argue that there are deep and enduring differences in international theory, differences that can always be counted on to undermine the "panacea of a global explanatory theory". These differences are traced, via Carr, to a basic antithesis deriving from the contrasting requirements and standards of normative and empirical theory. By the same token, however, I argue that differences that are irreconcilable on their own theoretical terms can be reconciled within the broader ambit of discipline, provided that the latter is understood as a community of scholars united by basic human interests — the avoidance of war for example — and not as a field of study amenable to the canons of science. To demonstrate the argument, I undertake a study of neoliberalism, focusing in particular on international regimes. I focus on neoliberalism because it is the heir apparent to realism, and on regime theorists because of their explicit attempt to reconcile idealist and realist perspectives. My critique of these approaches concentrates on their open agenda to synthesize realist and liberal international theory. I conclude that regime theory, as it is conceived by neoliberals, disguises, but ultimately founders, on the irreconcilable theoretical differences identified by Carr. (shrink)

This study supported Schon's notions of reflective practice as being applicable to teachers involved in teaching physical activities in the context of unforgiving learning environments and specifically to teachers in the sport diving community. According to Schon, one's ability to recognize patterns and act effectively and efficiently in situations of uniqueness and uncertainty depends upon one's capacity to frame problems. In doing so, one draws upon a repertoire of past experience arid ways of capturing that experience which enables the development (...) of the ability to reframe problems in light of information gathered from the direct experience. Reframing occurs through the processes of reflection-in-action and reflection-onaction and is a response to an internal dialogue related to the action setting, in which something has not happened as expected, thus producing a curious or intrigued response. A number of issues specific to teacher reflection in unforgiving learning environments emanated from the analysis of one sport diving teacher engaged in teaching an entry-level sport diving course which involved three different teaching environments. Three research questions guided the analysis. In answer to the first research question: What factors do sport diving practitioners reflect upon in each of the three environments? six reflective themes were identified in this case study with five being common across the three teaching environments and the remainder being specific to the classroom environment. The common themes were: a trusting relationship, the necessity of teacher control, to see the 'unforgivingness' of the environment, learning from one's practice, challenges to one's practice and understanding one's practice. In answer to the second research question: What influences the reflective process? the analysis revealed thirteen underlying or influencing factors or dispositions across the three teaching environments with eight of them being common to either two, or all three, of the environments. In answer to the third research question: What is the nature of sport diving practitioners' reflective practice? five categories have been used to address the analysis: 1) across environment related, 2) classroom and confined water related, 3) confined water and open water related 4) classroom and open water related and 5) specific to one environment. The reflection process documented in this study suggested that Schon's notion of reflective practice is very applicable to the professional development of sport diving as his conception of reflection applies to the three areas of teaching which exist in unforgiving learning environments: the problem solving disposition of teacher reflection, the learning from one's practice, and the probing of internal dialogue. (shrink)

The purposes of the study were: to operationalize Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching, to predict conception of teaching scores, to determine the existence of dominant conceptions of teaching, and to determine the extent to which personal, socio— cultural/educational and program variables predict dominant conceptions of teaching. A 75-item instrument, Conception of Teaching Scales was developed to operationalize Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching. A pilot study revealed that the instrument had good face, content, and convergent validities as well as acceptable test-retest (...) reliability and internal consistency. A sample of 471 Vancouver School Board and New Westminster School Board adult education instructors responded to a mailed questionnaire survey conducted in the Fall of 1993. Responses to the CTS were evaluated to determine whether Pratt’s five conceptions were operationalized successfully. Factor analysis was employed to determine whether the items in the CTS were representative of Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching. Results revealed that 63 out of 75 original items in the CTS successfully operationalized five conceptions of teaching, with Pratt’s Apprenticeship conception split into Apprenticeship-Practice and Apprenticeship-Modelling. Further refinement streamlined this number to a six—scale 50—item Revised Conception of Teaching Scales. Personal, socio—cultural/educational and program variables were used as predictors in multiple regressions to explain variance in six conception scores. There was no single common predictor of conceptions. On the average, the significant predictors in the six regression equations accounted for 14.5% of variance in the conception scores. The only prominent predictor which accounted for most variance in the Nurturing conception was personality—nurturance measure. An instructor’s dominant conceptions were predicted by nine independent variables, namely, gender, ethnicity, personality— dominance, personality—nurturance, years of teaching adults, content upgrade, living arrangement, level of education and class size. These variables were collapsed into three significant discriminant functions which correctly classified 34.7% of the 288 eligible cases into one of the six dominant conception groups. The study concluded that: Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching could be operationalized and that a Revised Conception of Teaching Scales was a valid and reliable instrument to assess people’s conceptions of teaching, conceptions of teaching were independent concepts having their own existence, most instructors held at least one single most dominant conception of teaching, and dominant conceptions of teaching were predicted by four personal variables, four socio— cultural/educational variables and one program variable. (shrink)

This study drew upon a constructivist and Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence view of learning, to develop an interactive curriculum development model involving high school students and teachers. Eight grade ten students contributed in a central way to the study, a factor precipitated by my intention to emphasize students’ perspectives concerning their individual abilities and interests, and the way in which the high school curriculum did or did not accommodate these. Four grade ten teachers also participated in the task of identifying (...) the degree to which students’ individual differences can be accommodated in an integrated high school curriculum. The study, conducted over a ten-month period during one school-year, addressed three questions. 1) What is the nature of the curriculum development process when high school students and teachers in their classroom practices, apply ideas congruent with Multiple Intelligence Theory, in order to address individual student differences, within the traditional constraints of a high school? How can these processes be incorporated into a model? 2) What was the role of the students in the development of the Multiple Intelligence Theory Application Model? and, 3) What was the role of the teachers in the development of the Multiple Intelligence Theory Application Model? My response to these questions involved the monitoring of students’ perspectives concerning their interests and abilities as reflected by both their current curriculum and the integrated curricular unit prepared by the teachers. The students’ and teachers’ perspectives are discussed and examined by means of in-depth interviews, interactive group discussions, and field notes and documentation of the collaborative processes involved in developing the integrated curriculum unit. The analysis of the findings suggests that change within the curriculum content, consistent with a constructivist and MI view of learning, would enable students to develop further their individual differences. Such change is endorsed particularly by the high school student participants. The study also examines the usefulness of the MITA Model as a means of initiating that change, within an integrated studies context. Finally, I suggest a number of related issues for further research. (shrink)

This thesis examines the role of emotion in the criminal law. It identifies the current understanding of emotion in the law, and challenges this understanding as it is revealed in the rules of criminal liability. It offers a new approach to understanding emotion which has important implications for the grounds of legal knowledge, the structure of the rules of criminal liability, and the process of judgment. Chapter One reviews theoretical approaches to understanding emotion in philosophy, psychology and law. The chapter (...) introduces a number of theoretical approaches to analyzing emotion, focusing particularly on the development in the understanding of the relationship between emotion and reason. Chapter Two examines models of moral and legal responsibility to identify their implicit understanding of emotion. Chapter Three focuses on the role of emotion in the rules of criminal liability, and, in particular, in the criminal defences of provocation, duress and self-defence. The law understands emotion to be an entity explainable in terms of the 'mechanisms' of'cognition' and 'affect' which underpin it. The chapter argues that the law adopts a different and conflicting understanding of these mechanisms in the rules of criminal liability, and that these differences have important normative implications. Chapter Four challenges the grounds of knowledge upon which assessments of criminal liability are based. Emotion becomes a metaphor for the need to reconceive the rules of criminal liability and the process of judgment. The chapter adopts a social constructionist approach to understanding emotion. Using this approach, it reassesses the role of emotion in the criminal defences of provocation, self-defence and duress, and explains the process of judgment as an emotional phenomenon. The thesis concludes that a constructionist approach to understanding emotion is well suited to the assessment of conduct in its spatial, historical and cultural context; and for this reason ought to be emphasized in the legal assessment of liability and punishment. (shrink)

This study develops and tests the strengths and weaknesses of an analytical framework entitled sociologies to examine students' responses to socioscientific issues. Sociologies is defined as the unpredictable and heterogeneous networks of links and associations that constitute the construction, accumulation, and mobilization of knowledge in the face of controversy. Recognizing the asymmetry of knowledge production, sociologies looks at how some knowledge is rendered more credible, and more powerful, than others. The framework consists of five questions: a) how causes and effects (...) are attributed; b) what points are linked to which other; c) what size and strength these links have; d) who the most legitimate spokespersons are; and e) and how all these elements are modified during the controversy. Latour calls the answer to these five questions "sociologies". Under this rubric, the production of knowledge is contentious because knowledge is socially constructed in a world where discourse and politics and knowledge and power are inextricably related. I argue that the framework of sociologies is an improvement upon commonly used analytical frameworks in socioscientific research in education as, unlike previous forms of analysis, it foregrounds the social construction of knowledge and highlights the contentious, complex, unpredictable, and dynamic nature of knowledge production prevalent in these issues. (shrink)

What are and what should be the leading principles of method of philosophy of education? Traditionally, it has been claimed that the leading principle consists of the deduction of statements about education from statements in "regular" philosophy. It has further been claimed that differing statements about education differ because they have been deduced from different positions in regular philosophy. These claims are analyzed by applying some tools of modern philosophical analysis to the works of four selected reputable philosophers of education (...) who are assumed to "represent" three of the chief modern "schools" of philosophy of education. This analysis reveals that the traditional characterization of the leading principles of method is at best very misleading. It reveals in fact that the leading principles of the Idealists and Realists are more accurately described as "pseudo-science" in which explanatory systems are devised by selecting statements about empirical facts or states-of-affairs and encrusting the system with terms which are metaphysical, synonymous and without empirical meaning. It further reveals that the writings of philosophers of education are also encrusted with ethical terms which have dominantly emotive meanings. The leading principles of the Instrumentalists are shown to be somewhat closer to those of the modern analytical philosophers and closer to the best of traditional regular philosophy. In conclusion, it is asserted that philosophy of education should in future have two leading principles: 1. The academic exercise of analyzing the writings of traditional philosophers of education using the tools of philosophical analysis. 2. The application of some or all of the techniques of philosophical analysis to empirical theories about education, such as learning theories. (shrink)

The main theme of my thesis is that Spenglerian analysis of western civilization as declining is correct, in that specifically western culture and civilization is giving way,more and more, to a world culture-pattern; but my thesis disagrees with his version of the decadence of all art-forms today as part of a declining culture, postulating rather that, specifically in the arts of Architecture and film, there is enormous activity of a creative nature. My thesis also quarrels with Spengler's analysis of the (...) relations existing between the economic- forms of society and the art-objects produced by that society. He states that the economic forms are the product of the soul of the culture. I contend that the art-products of the culture mirror the motivating drives of the economic forces of the social group while in a state of considerable interaction with them. I have tried to present my thesis, with both positions clearly stated, quoting Spengler at some length on the one hand, and Lewis Mumford at an equal length on the other, and with a supporting citation from Kuth Benedict's book, "Patterns of Culture" on social patterns of a more primitive nature. My thesis is divided into four chapters, the first serving as an introduction to the point-of-view and thematic material of the whole work; the second and third covering the recorded history of the motivating drives of western historical periods, drawing from this material to support my contention of the basic relationship existing between the methods of production in a social group and the art-objects produced by that group. In the final chapter, I have attempted to sum up the inferences from the historical chapters and to present my thesis and its main position in some detail. (shrink)

This essay is, in the main, a presentation of Dewey's social and political philosophy, with particular attention being given to his theory of the origin and nature of the state and to his recommendations for a programme of social reconstruction. As Dewey relies on the use of intelligence for conscious intervention within the social process and for the purposive control of social change, the first chapter of this essay is given to an exposition of Dewey's version of the pragmatic method, (...) Instrumentalism. The major influences which operated to shape Dewey's methodological approach to philosophic problems are the following: the rise of American industry: the divorce of production from hand-tool methods and the introduction of technology and mass manufacturing techniques; the emergence of Pragmatism as a distinctive American philosophy; the rising influence of the biological sciences; the contemplative character of classic philosophy. These influences form the matrix out of which Dewey's general philosophic outlook emerged; an outlook in which thinking is shifted from the contemplative to the practical, and which is ordered by the principle that thinking is instrumental to a control of the environment. Consistent with his methodology, Dewey places his theory of the emergence, existence and functioning of the state on an empirical base. Causal agency theories of the state are rejected; a theory of social organization must start with what is observable, human behaviour. The hypostatized "'Individual" and "Society" are dissolved by a psychology of social behaviourism which holds that the individual is an emergent from a group matrix and his behaviour as an individual Is explainable only by reference to the group. Dewey's social theory begins, therefore, with the facts that human beings exist and act within some kind of social grouping and that the consequences of acting within an association are perceived by the Individuals comprising it. The perception of consequences is the keystone of Dewey's theory. In Dewey's view the fact that consequences are perceived gives rise to the problem of controlling certain consequences, and to the correlative problem of providing the apparatus for regulating actions to attain specified and predetermined consequences. Dewey distinguishes two kinds of actions : those whose consequences are direct and confined to the group within which the actions take place are defined as private; but actions which have effects outside of the group and generate indirect consequences are classified as public. The need to control actions affecting the welfare of those not directly involved in the transactions brings into existence a special social group which Dewey calls A Public. This social entity takes on political form, It becomes a political state, when officials or representatives are appointed or elected and the organize the Public to care for the common interest generated by the indirect consequences of transactions. The formation of states in a continuing, experimental process; as the conditions of social life change so does the need for new forms of political organization. Finally, democracy, in Dewey's theory, is a form of government arising out of a specified practice in selecting officials and regulating their conduct as officials. Dewey's social theory implies the direction of society by ideas and by knowledge. It is Dewey's general thesis, therefore, that the method of experimental social inquiry is the most effective means for a community organized as a political state to make satisfactory adaptations to a changing material, intellectual and moral culture and, at the same time, allowing maximum freedom to the individual for the development of his capacities and potentialities. Recognizing that men are ruled by habit and that they cling to long established beliefs, Dewey saw the persistence of the liberal tradition as the means for carrying the experimental methodology into the arena of social and political affairs. But before it could serve this purpose, liberalism had to be reconstructed. In this reconstruction Dewey saw no need to modify the ends of liberalism, but he points out that if they are to play a guiding role in contemporary life liberalism must abandon its atomistic psychology and the correlative doctrines of individualism and laissez-faire and adopt the ideas and methods of an experimental social philosophy. The immediate problematic situation which prompted Dewey to advocate an experimental method of social inquiry operating through a renascent liberalism was the lack of integration in contemporary social life manifested by the fragmentation of society into a multiplicity of changing publics with differing needs and demands, and the apparent absence of a public controlling and directing the apparatus of government. Dewey argues that the impact of science on society has been so traumatic that traditional political methods are incapable of dealing with the problems which have been created. However, he does not specify what the alternative methods are, but only commits himself to identifying the conditions which must prevail if the Great Community and a democratically organized Public are to emerge. These conditions are absolute freedom of social inquiry and the widest possible distribution of its conclusions. Given the foregoing conditions, the state will become effectively the instrument of the Public. (shrink)

This paper is a critical essay on the question "Can machines think?", with particular attention paid to the articles appearing in an anthology Minds and Machines, A. R. Anderson editor. The general conclusion of this paper is that those arguments which have been advanced to show that machines can think are inconclusive. I begin by examining rather closely a paper by Hilary Putnam called "Minds and Machines" in which he argues that the traditional mind-body problem can arise with a complex (...) cybernetic machine. My argument against Putnam's is that either there are no problems with computers which are analogous to the ones raised by mental states, or where there are problems with machines, these problems do not have at bottom the same difficulties that human experiences raises. I then continue by showing that a cybernetic machine is an instantiation of a formal system. This leads to a discussion of the relationship between formality and predictability in which I try to show that some types of machine are in principle predictable. In the next section I attempt to prove that any discussion of outward signs of imitative behavior presupposes that some linguistic theory, such as a type reduction, has been substantiated. The force of this argument is that such a theory has not in fact been substantiated. I offer some general theory about the complexity of concept-property relations. Finally I give a demonstration that no test or set of tests can be found that will be logically sufficient for the ascription of the concept "capable of thought." If this is successful, then I have shown that no test can be found, which when a machine is built to pass it, is logically adequate for saying that that.machine can think. This argument is offered as further criticism of the Imitation Game which A. M. Turing proposed as an adequate test for thinking subjects. Besides the specific conclusion that insufficient evidence, has been offered to say that machines can think, this paper offers a more general conclusion that most standard problems have at bottom a linguistic difficulty. However, this general conclusion is a broad speculative one to which the work in this paper, is only a small exemplification and as such reflects mainly the further ambitions of the author. (shrink)

That the eighteenth century was a period of changing ideas is a proposition as true when applied to questions of language as it is when applied to other fields of intellectual endeavour. Grammatical studies were still closely related to philosophy, as they had been for some centuries. The rationalism of the seventeenth century had resulted in the strictly logical exposition of grammatical theories whose aim was to produce a normative means of teaching the 'art de bien parler'. With this rationalist (...) approach arose the theory of a grammaire générale and its attempts to reduce the grammatical facts of all languages to logical terms. Although the eighteenth century aimed rather at teaching the 'art de bien penser', the idea of a rationally-based grammaire générale persisted as the foundation for most grammatical description, and actually reached its highest point of development in the siècle des lumières. Empiricism and the sensationalist philosophy of Condillac were slow to affect the techniques of grammatical enquiry and description. After outlining these trends in grammatical description, our study continues by examining the eighteenth-century grammarians' concepts of the word, attempting to relate them to the philosophical and scientific shift from rationalism to empiricism. The Encyclopédie, in which may be found the grammatical doctrines of Dumarsais and Beauzée, is shown to contain two distinct approaches to this subject, both of which treat the word as the smallest meaningful unit of language and as the basic element of grammatical description. Whereas Dumarsais looked upon the word as essentially a logical element dependent on semantic and rational criteria, Beauzée is shown to have based his concept on empirical linguistic facts, and to have considered the word as a sign whose meaning is both semantic and functional. Like de Saussure at the turn of this century, Beauzée posited paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations dependent on the existence of relative and negative oppositions within the word as a passive element of the lexicon and as a functional unit of language. In the process of his development of these relationships, Beauzée also came very near to establishing the modern concept of the morpheme. The theories of Dumarsais and Beauzée are compared and contrasted and the conclusion drawn that Beauzée's empirical approach resulted in his being far more modern in his concept of the word and in his understanding of general language problems than Dumarsais. (shrink)

Marx's concept of alienation has proven to be a subject of controversy for many social theorists. One of the more provocative treatments of this concept has been outlined by Jean-Paul Sartre. Drawing heavily on Marxism's Hegelian tradition, Sartre portrays alienation as being a crucial element in the formation of the individual's perception of social reality. An appreciation of Sartre's project and its relevance to Marxist theory necessitates the examination of the origins and development of the concept of alienation. For this (...) purpose, a brief account of Hegel's usage of the term is followed by a discussion of Feuerbach's efforts to counter Hegelian idealism with an explicitly materialist perspective. Alienation makes its first appearance in Marx's work with the publication of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and the concept was to be a topic of concern throughout Marx's life. In particular, his analysis of commodity fetishism in his later work shows an obvious connection with alienation. Georg Lukacs' presentation of the reification of consciousness is a valuable addition to the examination of the fetishism of commodities. Lukacs provides numerous insights concerning the relationship between alienation and commodity fetishism as well as offering a useful articulation of the role of consciousness in Marxist theory. Lukacs' contribution is especially helpful in clarifying the nature of Sartre's project. Both theorists seek to outline an exposition of consciousness which counters idealistic excesses with a materialistic perspective faithful to the basic tenents of Marxism. In addition, Sartre employs the notion of reification as well as that of alienation in his psychoanalytic approach. His technique is intended to illuminate the class biases inherent in the consciousness of each individual, a proposal which finds an immediate application in explaining the distorted awareness which petit bourgeois intellectuals such as Lukacs and Sartre himself bring to the study of Marx's method. (shrink)

This thesis examines deliberation in legal proceedings. Legal deliberation is conceived of as the procedures by which a judge, jury, or other rational deliberating agents arrive at a verdict. Legal deliberation involves deliberation about laws and about facts. This thesis is concerned chiefly with deliberation about facts and how value considerations impinge on deliberation about facts. In legal proceedings there are a number of principles that are generally accepted, although their application varies according to whether the procedure is criminal, civil, (...) administrative or other. These principles include: an accused must be proved to have committed an act according to a given standard; a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty; a proposition may be presumed by making an inference from a basic proposition which has been proved; only relevant evidence may be admitted; only reliable evidence is accepted; evidence may be accepted on the basis of judicial notice; and unreliable evidence may be admitted if corroborated. Some less familiar principles are that proved propositions are consistent; all the elements of a case need to be proved in order for the case to be proved; a proposition at issue is not proved unless it is based upon complete evidence; and that the degree of persuasion that a deliberator has towards a proposition at issue be equal to the objective probability of that proposition. Although these principles are generally accepted the intepretation of these principles is unsettled. This thesis attempts to give an interpretation of these principles which justifies them. All interpretations have in common, I hold, that a rational agent has principles for modifying his deliberative state given new evidence. The deliberative state of an agent consists of a set of elements where B is the agent's degree of belief over a set of propositions S; K is a subset of S — the full or accepted beliefs; D is the agent's degree of desirability over propositions in S; ⁺ is a dynamical principle of deliberation which determines how values for B, and D change over time. The desires of the agent are taken to be a reflection of the values inherent in legal principles. A traditional principle is that in order to convict someone it must be proved that the accused committed the alleged act. There is little agreement, however, about what is involved in proving that a person has done something. There are two main theories which are used in law. One theory, the Austinian theory, takes an action to be a bodily movement that is voluntary. A second, wider view is that an action includes the bodily movement, consequences, relevant circumstances and voluntariness, and perhaps other elements, such as omissions, and things that happen to one, but not a mental event. I argue that an action is a part of a sequence of causally related events. It is that part of the sequence with the properties that are represented to the agent in his causally efficacious mental state. The interpretation of "prove" in the last cited principle is also unsettled. All views hold that, in some sense, a proved proposition be sufficiently probable. There are five views of probability that I canvass: the logical view, the subjective view, the relative frequency view, the chance view and the epistemic view. I argue that the epistemic view is particularly suited to legal reasoning. On this view probability is conceived as a mind independent logical relation between evidence admitted and the conclusion reached on the basis of that evidence. Probability also reflects the underlying chance of single events and so applies to individual actions. The traditional practices have been interpreted as the dynamics of deliberative states. There are two plausible models of these dynamics: Bayesian and non-Bayesian. On Bayesian theories all changes of belief are by Bayes' theorem or generalizations thereof. On a non-Bayesian view beliefs are changed by accepting new beliefs, conjoining them with the old beliefs, and modifying the old beliefs on the basis of the new ones. As an intepretation of legal deliberation the Bayesian view has a number of disadvantages. Among other difficulties I survey, on the Bayesian view one can not consider a case proved if all the elements of a case are proved, and one cannot regard a proved proposition at issue as true. Hence I reject the Bayesian theory. The principle that a person is proved to have committed an act if it is sufficiently probable that he committed such an act gives rise to a difficulty. Ultimately the problem amounts to how a theory of deliberation can meet three principles of legal reasoning: the deliberating agent's beliefs are consistent, the agent believes a proposition A if the probability of A is sufficiently high, and if the agent believes A and believes B then he believes. I show how this problem is resolved by requiring probability to be resilient. A person is proved to have committed an act if the probability of having committed that act reaches an appropriate standard of proof. But what is the standard that is at issue here? If the judge is a utilitarian, for instance his desire function must meet the constraint that it equals the average desires of all other agents. In the final chapter I argue that a utilitarian rationale for standards of proof violates a person's right not to be convicted if innocent. This is due to the fact that a person can be convicted by a utilitarian deliberator even though it is more probable than not that he did not commit the alleged offence. (shrink)

The paper consists of five steps. The first step is to study and explore theories of order, time image, and meaning of place. A hypothetical equation is proposed which defines a place as having three basic components: time, order and meaning. Special attention is paid to the time image of a place through the thesis. The second step is to organize the theories as a set of systematic design ideas. Twelve design categories are further introduced, which include Rhythm, Season, Celebration, (...) Layer, Future, Sequence, Derelict, Night, Center, Boundary, and Sacred Places. The third step is to generate a set of patterns for the waterfront design under twelve design topics. Pattern is a bridge between principle and design. The conversion of a design idea into a design pattern can be seen as a procedure to test the validity of design ideas. The fourth step is to apply the design patterns to a specific site on the West Vancouver Waterfront. In a sense, the application of the patterns is an experiment, aimed at testing the patterns, hence the whole thesis as a hypothesis. The final step is to review and evaluate the thesis and the project. (shrink)

A single case study research format was used to understand what happens when Western people are involved in meditation over a long period of time. This research examines what problems are faced in integrating meditation into a modern Western style of living. In this single case study of the long term process of meditation, the co-researcher was interviewed for his account of his twelve year experience of meditation. Additional data was obtained from friends and family members as well as from (...) the co-researcher's lifeline. The co-researcher's account of his involvement in meditation highlighted several problems. The problem of obsessively trying to become enlightened and spiritual materialism was illustrated by the co-researcher's experience. Other problems illuminated were the problems of isolation and withdrawal in relationship, developing psychological blind spots in spiritual practice and dealing with intense kundalini awakening phenomenon. The vulnerability of different paths of meditation to these problems was considered. (shrink)

It is claimed that action discourse provides us with a criterion of adequacy for a theory of action; that with action discourse we have a family of concepts which a theory of action must accommodate. After an exegesis of Davidson's essay "Agency", it is argued that his semantics of action is incompatible with our concepts of motivation and responsibility for action and of attributions of action and agency, and must, therefore, be rejected. A theory of rational agency is presented within (...) which are to be found accounts of intention, coming to intend, intentional action, and an alternative semantics of action which connects the action essentially to agency. The theory of rational agency is then used to illuminate the concepts of trying, compulsion, autonomy and involuntariness, mistake, accident, and the so-called active-passive distinction. (shrink)

This analysis of the narrative/anti-narrative debate in avant-garde film theory and praxis is contextualized in terms of the developments in Modernism in the visual and plastic arts. The problems raised by the aesthetic strategies formal autonomy versus narrative appropriation are explored by examining several discrete historical paradigms rather than following a strict linear historical chronology of the development of Modernism and avant-garde practices. Therefore the late 1930's East/West debates between the four writers associated with the Frankfurt school were discussed because (...) their discourses reveal a spectrum of possibilities which span each end of this polarized autonomy/efficacy argument. The discourses look at the issues of production aesthetics and reception aesthetics also. Within the parameters of East/West debates, the positioning of the subject in terms of "distracted habit" or "praxis" are critical considerations to a reception aesthetic. Another historical paradigm for this debate was the writing and film practice which emerged from the nexus of the events of May 1968. The East/West debates informed this writing and the development of the aesthetic questions raised by Peter Wollen in the "Two Avant-Gardes." Here the important issues of materialism, ontology, and the development of human perception are raised. The return to narrative is represented by the "second" avant-garde's film practice and informs the issues of new narrative in feminist film practices. This is narrative with a difference however. Here questions of language and the production of culture are critically examined and naturally the narrative/anti-narrative debate continues. Finally, these issues are brought foreword to the contemporary context and related specifically to the production of avant-garde film in Canada. One can see this contemporary debate in light of the past, however, the conclusions drawn by the thesis do not presume to resolve the narrative/anti-narrative debate or prescribe one particular approach, since this will arise from actual practice. The intention of the study is to introduce the central issues raised by social commitment/artistic autonomy and contribute to a better understanding of theoretical and practical implications of the debate over the use of narrative. (shrink)

This thesis presents the translation and study of the twelfth section of Bio gsal grub mtha', an early fourteenth century Tibetan text composed by the bKa' gdams pa scholar, dBus pa bio gsal. Bio gsal grub mtha' as a whole represents a distinct sort of scholarly literature known as Grub mtha' that finds its roots in Indian siddhānta literature. Tibetan Grub mtha' texts set forth, as the name in translation reveals, the "established tenets" of various Indian, Tibetan, and occasionally Chinese (...) philosophical schools. The section of Bio gsal grub mtha' translated here presents the tenets of the Mādhyamika school of Tibetan Buddhism in general, and their fourteenth century bKa' gdams pa manifestation in particular. The central tenet of Mādhyarnika philosophy is that all phenomena are empty of self-nature. Even that which is discovered to be the ultimate emptiness - is also said to be devoid of any real self-nature. All phenomena are dependent-arisings, lacking reality, existing like dreams and magical illusions. These assertions are discussed in detail in the translation and in the second part of the introduction. Of special interest to scholars of both Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, however, is dBus pa bio gsal's classification of the Mādhyamika subschools. The early Tibetan Buddhist scholars took upon themselves the task of categorizing and inventing names for the various Mādhyamika "schools", and dBus pa bio gsal's classification represents the development of such thought to the fourteenth century. The introduction elucidates both dBus pa bio gsal's divisions of the Mādhyamika sub-schools and elaborates on earlier and later classifications set forth by Tibetan scholars. The investigation provides insight into both the tenets of the Mādhyamika school and the attempts of the Tibetans to arrange the previously unclassified Mādhyamika subschools in a manner that would render them more logical and accessible to themselves and to future generations of scholars. (shrink)

This study emerged from an awareness of the critical role that learning plays within social movements and from a belief that adult education can learn much from examining the learning activities of the Women's Movement. Using a comparative approach, the similarities and differences between feminist consciousness raising and Freire's conscientization method were explored. The process of analysis involved studying Freire's written works available in English and the literature resources available through the University of British Columbia library on feminist consciousness raising. (...) The comparison began with presentation of the historical, political, social, and economic factors which led to the development of consciousness raising and conscientization. This included an examination of the historical background of Brazil, of biographical information on Freire, and of the events which led to the development of Freire's conscientization method. In a similar way, this study explored the historical background of the Women's Movement, with particular emphasis on its re-emergence during the sixties and those factors which led to the creation of consciousness raising groups. The next step in the analysis was the comparison of consciousness raising and conscientization using the following categories: the themes or content within each process, the nature of the interaction, the presence and role of teachers or coordinators, the phases in each process, and the changes in consciousness expected as a result of each process. The study concluded with discussion of the differences between these two processes, which appear to be closely linked to the different contexts and factors, such as the different kinds of oppression being fought against, which led to the development of each learning activity. As the similarities were identified, it became evident that a number of important elements were common to both learning activities despite the very different contexts. These common elements were presented as principles of the consciousness raising method found within liberating social movements. Comparing these two learning activities indicated the liberating power of allowing people to tell their own story. Implications for practice focused on the need for a contextual sensitivity when working with or studying the learning activities of social movements. It was argued that awareness of the similarities and differences between consciousness raising and conscientization could prevent application of either method as simply recipes for liberation. Many recommendations were made for further research which stressed the utility of comparative analysis for continuing examination of learning within social movements. Recommendations were made for examination of the relationship between the nature of learning activities and the kind of oppression, either gender-based or class-based. Further collaboration between the Women's Movement and adult education was suggested. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin has achieved prominence in the field of jurisprudence through his book, Taking Rights Seriously, his many articles in the "New York Review of Books," and other publications that pursue a coherent philosophy for liberals. In response to criticism of his earlier work, Dworkin has expanded and clarified his liberal position on equality rights. This thesis will address how Dworkin's later writings attempt to fill in gaps that occur in Dworkin's first arguments for a hierarchical, principled picture of the (...) law. It will be argued here that Dworkin's views require an unusual perspective on the concept of an individual, and this renders his rights-based political morality seriously deficient. The nature of Dworkin's theory is first indicated by an attack on the "ruling theory of law" which he characterizes as positivistic when asked what the law is, and utilitarian when required to decide what the law should be. His central criticism charges that legal arguments are incomplete without principles which refer to or are implications of rights. Dworkin's liberal political morality is founded on rights to equal respect and concern. The elaboration of what these rights mean is sustained throughout Dworkin's publications. He maintains that his liberal rights-thesis is the theoretical articulation of the constitutional right to equality. Applying Dworkin's rights-theory to the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke2 case illuminates many of the more abstract aspects of his views. This thesis will argue against Dworkin by focusing on the too-narrow conception of individuals implied by his theory of rights. The ideal Dworkin employs of a right to 'equality of resources' justifies an aggressive redistributional scheme, unchecked by a fuller conception of what is an individual. Dworkin is only able to hold his ideal of a right to 'equality of resources' together with his notion of individual rights by accepting a diminished concept of the individual. This argument suggests that a fuller conception of an individual recognizes the connection between merit and entitlement. Dworkin's scepticism regarding the feasibility of merit being protected by individual rights is undercut by introducing a distinction between merit and success. Leaving key aspects of an individual, such as merit and its related features, out of official deliberation about rights, conceptually inhibits the extent of individualizability in a rights theory. If we wish to maintain such features, and value their protection and cultivation by a political order, adopting Dworkin's rights-thesis and its consequences is impossible. (shrink)

Victor Hugo is well known as a poet, a playwright and a novelist, but until recently he has not been recognized as a philosopher; for many years critics have admired the literary output of the man, but criticized the apparent contradictions and inconsistencies of his thought. Further studies have, however, revealed the true nature of Hugo's philosophy, and shown it to comprise a well thought out and coherent system. One of the most important themes in Hugo's work is that of (...) human progress. In Les Misérables, Hugo's great novelistic masterpiece, he develops this theme and explores various of its aspects, treating at the same time many vital components of his philosophy. In examining the theme of progress in Les Misérables we have therefore sought to explore Hugo's ideology, as expressed in the novel, and to relate it to general nineteenth century currents of thought. This first necessitated a study of Hugo's religious beliefs, including his experiments with spiritualism and his belief in reincarnation and the hierarchy of beings. We then established the close relationship which exists between the poet's religious beliefs and his faith in the doctrine of progress Armed with an understanding of these basic principles, we then undertook a close textual analysis of the novel, examining Hugo's belief in the perfectibility of man and the perfectibility of society. Having laid the groundwork in Chapter I, we were therefore ready, in Chapter II, to study Hugo's belief in the progress of the individual : after looking at his portrayal of each level of the hierarchy of beings, we then looked at the various elements involved in the "progress" of the human soul, as illustrated by the characters in the novel. Then, in the third chapter, we approached the broader question of the progress of society and of Hugo's view of historical, political, social, economic and scientific progress. This in-depth study of one aspect of Victor Hugo's great novel thus led us to an understanding of the author's world-view, and of his conception of the relationship between man, God and the universe. It is a deeply religious, unique, and fundamentally optimistic philosophy, presented in a highly poetic manner. Although we may not accept all of Hugo's arguments, it is hard not to be stirred nonetheless by this thought-provoking work. (shrink)

Leaving aside the classical world, Dance as an art form emerges with the renaissance. Combinations of dance and drama are seen in the court entertainments sponsored by Catherine de Medici in France and in the masques of Ben Jon-son, John Milton and Henry Lawes, the composer, in England. These dance-dramas shared the contemporary fondness for lavish sensuous spectacle, with mythological and allegorical subjects full of youth and beauty. The seventeenth century saw, in this new form of art, the development of (...) stage and set-design as well as the emerging importance of the individual performer. The foundation of Richelieu's L 'Academie Française which concerned itself with language and literature was paralleled by Louis XIV's L'Academie Nationale de Musique et de la Danse. The baroque and rococo characteristics of other arts are reflected in the ballets of Lully and Rameau. In the eighteenth century, theoretical works appear in which the dance is treated as parallel to the other arts. The Lettres sur la Danse of Jean-Georges Noverre stresses "nature" and design as do the literary treatises from Dryden to Samuel Johnson,, Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare, and Lives of the Poets. Carlo Blasis' Treatise on the Art of Dancing is as much concerned with perfection of technique as the most ardent proso-dists of the period. The so-called "Classical Ballet", however, was the expression of romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth century as much as in literature and the other arts. It sought to add strangeness and wonder to beauty and to escape from reality into fairyland or dreamland. It dominated ballet throughout most of the century and is seen in well-known works like Giselle, Swan Lake, and The Sleeping Beauty. Literary and artistic parallels abound, of course. However, the Dance is the last of the arts to develop a critical theory as it is the last of the arts to emerge as an aesthetically self-conscious, serious and professional form of expression from what had been vestigial and fragmentary. Even musical and dramatic renditions have left at least the score and the script. But the Dance, after its last performance, was largely a matter of fast-fading memory and variable hearsay. This thesis will endeavour to trace the development and changes in aesthetic outlook of the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through a comparative study of the writings of Jean-Georges Noverre, Heinrich von Kleist and Théophile Gautier. As far as one can judge from any available materials and sources of reference, bringing together these three writers whose work contains both literature and dance criticism, poetics and what might be called "balletics", has not been undertaken before; this is also the first time that Kleist has been given a significant place in a discussion of dance theory. It is the chief aim of this study to point out and elucidate the pattern of relationships between dance as an art form and literature. The relationships of theory and practice in the arts are no less complex here than in any other periods. Noverre, for example, as a theorist, was a consistent and articulate late eighteenth century classicist ; but as a professional man of the theatre, he had a keen eye for popular taste, even if it catered to fashions he must have considered antiquated or cheap. Gautier, on the other hand, though he possessed no practical knowledge of the dance, he analyzed it so persuasively, so variously, and had such a wide audience that he strongly influenced the public taste for these aspects of romantic dance. It is doubtful whether Kleist was known to the world of dance, whether he was really influenced by it, or had any direct influence on it in any way. Yet, his essay Ueber das Marionettentheater might well serve as a manifesto for the new romantic form of dance when it was just being born. As a result of the analysis of these writers, it becomes apparent that all three, Noverre, Gautier, and Kleist, represent stepping-stones in the development of dance from the early stages of superficial extravaganzas, through the clearly defined measures of eighteenth century dance, to the natural expression of spontaneous movement in the next century. Hence, they can be said to define the basic progression from classicism to romanticism in the art of dance. (shrink)

This thesis discusses the philosophical positions that have arisen out of the research with cerebral commissurotomy patients. Following this discussion we develop and defend a position of our own. The first chapter discusses the operation and the postoperative tests that were conducted. Evidence is set out that makes it prima facie plausible that these patients have two minds. This evidence is basically evidence that the two hemispheres are not capable of pooling their informational content in special situations. Evidence for this (...) non integration is found in all the senses except taste. This chapter also discusses hemispheric specialization, language in the minor hemisphere and the cuing mechanisms of the split hemispheres. The second chapter is devoted to Puccetti and Bogen who argue that normal humans have two minds. Their evidence for this comes from the evidence for two minds in the cerebral commissurotomy patients. Puccetti argues that if two minds were not present to start with, a simple operation would not elicit two minds from one. Puccetti also discusses tests on normal humans that are to support his position. These arguments are discussed and rejected. The third chapter discusses additional evidence for only one mind in normal humans. Puccetti's arguments are not only inadequate in that they do not prove their point but they ignore a great deal of evidence that there is only one mind in normal humans. This evidence comes from interference that two different tasks cause for each other. There is also evidence that the two hemispheres work together on one task and that their specialization is complimentary, resulting in functional dependence, rather than being duplicative. The fourth chapter is devoted to Eccles' attempt to reduce the minor hemisphere to an unconscious, computer like entity. He argues from what he calls, 'the unity of consciousness' and on epistomological grounds concerning evidence for a mind other than one's own. The argument from the unity of consciousness, however, begs the question and his epistomological considerations leave him in grave danger of solipsism. Chapter five discusses Dewitt's attempt to mediate between Eccles and Puccetti. Dewitt believes that Puccetti is right in asserting that these patients have two minds. On the other hand he is impressed with Eccles theory that the lack of language in the minor hemisphere causes a great disparity between the minor hemisphere and the major hemisphere. He therefore concludes that the patients have two minds, one of which does not qualify for personhood. Dewitt, however, has gravely underestimated the ability of the minor hemisphere. It has more language capacity than he believes and gives every evidence of being a person. It is also questionable whether or not language is a necessary condition for the self-awareness that goes with personhood. Chapter six looks at Robinson's attempts to undermine the two mind interpretation of the evidence. He does this mainly by trying to find tiimilar counter examples that resist a two mind interpretation. His program fails due to the dissimilarity of the counter examples and the cerebral commissurotomy results. Chapter seven considers Nagel's contention that the patients have an uncountable number of minds. Nagel does not believe that there is a strange uncountable number of minds that these patients actually have. Instead he believes that it is impossible to say how many minds they do have because we do not know how to count them. Nagel reasons that we have good evidence to believe that the patients have one mine and good evidence that they have two. Since both cannot be true we do not know what to say about these patients. Nagel believes that the above considerations make it difficult for us to understand these patients' mental lives. We agree with Nagel that there are times when it is difficult if not impossible to say how many minds the commissurotomy patient has. We disagree that this is always the case. Our problem with counting is not, however, a failure to understand something about the patients' mental lives, but is due to a counting problem when two hemispheres are only partially integrated. We agree with a suggestion from Nagel that an unusual connection between the hemispheres does not settle the question of how many minds the patient might be said to have. The hemispheres do seem to be able to integrate or pool their information using sophisticated muing mechanisms. Our position is that the patients usually have one mind that integrates the two hemispheres of the brain by cuing. The testing situations, however, interfere with this cuing and thereby cause a temporary, partial nonintegration between the hemispheres. During this time we, therefore do not know how many minds the patient can be said to have. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that contemporary legal philosophy provides an inadequate analysis of central indeterminacies in law. I focus on "judicial discretion" as central to current analysis. Positivists, such as H.L.A. Hart, argue that it is the contingencies of human society that give rise to uncertainty in the application of law. Therefore, they believe that judges must be given discretionary powers. Ronald Dworkin, an American philosopher, believes that judges should not be given such powers. For him, it is the (...) positivists' conception of law that is amiss. He believes that once the institutions of law are correctly appraised, the need for judicial discretion will be seen as a conceptual fault arising from a positivist analysis. In order to provide a critical framework in which to assess this debate, I outline the Causal Theory of Law developed by Professors S.C. Coval and J.C. Smith. If the attention given the concept of judicial discretion represents a concern with subjective elements in law, then the attention given the concept of a rule represents a concern with objective elements in law. In a tentative way, one might interpret the question at issue as being: "Is law ultimately an affair of reason or will?" Other questions follow: "Is this a false dichotomy?" "Must law be a combination of both authority and power, rational argument and official fiat?" I address these questions indirectly through an examination of Ronald Dworkin's legal philosophy. I find that Dworkin fails to understand the nature and complexity of the problems that he confronts. He believes that legal systems can be designed so that authority and power, legitimacy and efficacy never compromise each other. He does this, however, by giving precedence authority. The causal Theory interprets such resolutions as "disjunctive". Dworkin's resolution betrays his inability to appreciate the complexity of the problem. He also obscures the nature of the problem by his "rights thesis", which interprets the issue involved as primarily a question of normative political theory. However, his conception of normativeness is ambiguous and requires analysis. I argue, against Dworkin, first, that indeterminacy in law is a problem for institutional design, and second, that to argue that this design problem is normative is to take a view that is overly narrow and ultimately misleading. I conclude that those involved in the philosophical debate surrounding indeterminacy in law erroneously think that the solution will take a disjunctive form: One side or the other, of the antinomy between reason and fiat in law must be rejected. In line with the Causal Theory, I argue that once this problem is seen as one of institutional design, the problem takes on an entirely new shape. It becomes one of management and experiment. The function of the law is to help manage the political affairs of society, and also to provide opportunities for individual and group initiatives. Man is limited in his experience and knowledge. In the design of legal institutions man's abilities are not infinite; he can hardly be expected to foresee all eventualities. But such indeterminacy remains a matter of degree, relative to man's knowledge and his ability to use it. The legal enterprise, as does the scientific, can proceed without a completely worked out set of agreements, or system of beliefs. What is essential is an understanding among the participants as to how such sets will be developed. The core remains empirical. (shrink)

This thesis is based on a conviction that Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet is a metaphysical romance in a truly modern sense; a parable which uses the terminology of modern psychology and romantic love to describe a search for gnosis, or self-knowledge. The characters are prototypes whose enemies are the warring forces within the psyche: the romantic imagination, which manufactures the Illusions of love, and the intellectual examination which may destroy the illusion, but leaves nothing in its place. Durrell shows (...) that his prototype characters must learn to value the naked experience of an emotional moment with a balanced spontaneity of perception divorced from the extremes of both the romantic imagination and the intellect. The first chapter describes the psychological equilibrium which Durrell calls "the heraldic universe," which is concretized by statements from The Black Book, excerpts from Durrell's poems and allusions to C. P. Cavafy, D. H. Lawrence and C. G. Jung. The final paragraphs deal with the dual approach to character and the corresponding polarities of the landscape of Alexandria. The second chapter concentrates on Durrell's use of the novel for therapeutic enquiry, as a means of looking at the dark side of the psyche. The chapter explains the relation of the Quartet to moral allegory as well as its concern with the dualism of instinct and ideal, reason and passion, which Aldous Huxley and Wyndham Lewis describe in a more expository style. The third chapter contrasts the destructive will-to-power and the passion of political conspirators with the creative will of the poet and artist, the seeker after self-identity. The final paragraphs deal with images of madness and psychic disintegration resulting from obsessional love. The fourth chapter discusses the major characters in relation to the life of their imaginations. In the case of the writers in the Quartet, the literary imagination distorts perceptions of love and experience. Pursewarden, the central artistic figure, is viewed in relation to the other prototypes who make a "story" out of their lives. The final chapter attempts to show that Clea is a culmination of a psychological battle within the characters, an active drama instead of a reflection upon emotional experience. Love becomes depersonalized, a force which exists apart from the egotism of personality. (shrink)

In the 'Appendix' to the Treatise of Human Nature David Hume asserts that he has been unable to explain the principles which can adequately account for the unity and the identity of the self. There exists in Book I of the Treatise, a principle, which can in fact account for the unity and identity of the self. Hume utilizes the principle in his explication of our belief in the continued and independent existence of a material world. He did not, however, (...) utilize the principle in his explanation of the unity and identity of the self. In the Introduction I indicate what the principle asserts and precisely how Hume utilizes it. In chapter one I examine Hume's concept of identity with a view towards clarifying some puzzles which arise in his account. Also in this chapter I point out how his explanation of the manner in which identity is predicated of a multiplicity can be improved. Both the Introduction and chapter one prepare the way for a clear statement of the manner in which identity is predicated of the self in chapter two. I show furthermore, how an impression of the self is possible upon the principles of Book I. All references to the Treatise are to the L.A. Selby-Bigge edition, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1955. (shrink)

During an unguided tour of the Epistemological Forest, we will at least bump into some of the classical questions about knowledge. What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? How is knowledge shared? We may also explore some of the more quirky questions. What is the currency for knowledge exchange? What about knowledge banks? Who pays and who collects the dividends? The session will seek to maintain a pragmatic focus in exploring the role and kinds of knowledge and the mechanisms for (...) knowledge exchange in the pursuit of comprehensive community health. (shrink)

What is an event? What sort of object are they? How is a given event distinguished from other events and other objects? This thesis on science oriented metaphysics will take Davidson's account of events as its starting point to answer the above questions. It will develop this conception of events into one that is consistent with the special theory of relativity by updating its notions of change, cause and property. The new concept of a proper property, a generalization of the (...) notion of an invariant, is introduced to solve some of these metascientific problems. Other features of the work include an analysis of the Lorentz force equation as it applies to one family of cases of causation, showing that a use of cause and effect to help individuate events cannot be complete until relativistic features are built into it. I propose that the conception of a proper property will also solve this worry over the nature of causation as it affects the issues of events above. In particular, it will attempt to solve a charge of circularity which has been leveled at Davidson's account. This property analysis also has the feature that it makes the account of events which started with Davidsonian inspiration more like Kim's. Kim's account of events is modified on the grounds it does not do justice to our intuitions about changes and events. (shrink)

This essay is premised on two assumptions: first, that concepts change their meaning; second, that the examination of the relationship between language and action - two central components of the public sphere - illuminates the process of change. Three models of conceptual change are critically discussed through their language-action axis. The first, adduced by German historian of concepts Reinhart Koselleck, assumes that conceptual change results from a gap between language and action. The second, put forward by historian of political thought (...) Quentin Skinner, argues that conceptual change is produced by political theorists that are doing something when writing; language, according to this model is a form of action. The third model is derived from the American PC movement, which, it is argued here, presents us with a theory and a practice of conceptual change. According to this model, conceptual change results from a deliberate change of language by social agents. Language, as maintained by this model, is the world; action cannot be discussed separately from language since everything exists only through language. As we move from one model to the next we see that the place language assumes in both political theory and practice is increasing in relation to, and at the expense of, action. This essay argues that the mid-twentieth century "linguistic turn," coupled with the growing influence of postmodernism on political theory and practice, results in a distorted picture of the polls. This weakens the ability of political theory to make intelligible the world around us, and also its effectiveness as a guide for action. This tendency must be remedied i f political theory and practice wishes to remain relevant to the public sphere. (shrink)

Complexity theory studies the workings of complex adaptive systems. A complex adaptive system can adapt and change in response to information it gathers from its environment. It responds to feedback by changing its actions, and develops new activities, learning capacity and ability to innovate. Complex adaptive systems depend on information flow through linked networks of individuals and groups, such as those present in cities or communities. Hornby Island, a small northern gulf island in British Columbia, Canada, possesses the characteristics of (...) a complex adaptive system and is used to provide examples of how complexity theory can be applied and used by a community. Observations from Hornby Island and the use of SWOT analysis have provided insight to the applicability and usefulness of complexity theory in the theoretical and local action contexts of community development. Misunderstandings between the scientific and humanitarian backgrounds of complexity and community development theories represent weaknesses and pose some threats to the field of community development. However, complexity theory also possesses strengths that have the potential to provide community development practitioners and communities with opportunities, such as tools and ideas, to better adapt to change. The following opportunities for learning and action within communities are suggested and expanded upon in this thesis: human led creative adaptation; location of mal-adaptive schemata; education for adaptive schemata; reducing and changing mal-adaptive schemata; guidelines and generalizations; and intangibles and legitimization of actions. This thesis concludes that complexity theory is applicable and useful to community development because it strengthens other theories and concepts related to community development; helps frame what goes on in the community; and locates focuses for change. It also provides new tools and ideas for action, to communities and practitioners, to better deal with change and create resilient communities. (shrink)

My final product from the Roman Spectacle class was a podcast about the classical world of ancient Rome. It takes Lucan’s epic poem Pharsalia as the jumping off point for all sorts of investigations into literary, political, and cultural issues that engage modern classicists and tries to explain these issues in an easily digestible way. One of the primary topics I wanted to focus on in the beginning episodes was the concept of spectacle, not just by defining it but by (...) showing the ways in which spectacle influenced political decisions and changed artistic expression in imperial Rome. Each episode takes a familiar concept from the modern world, like action movies from the 1980s, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, or Canadian PSAs, and deconstructs it without academic jargon. The show follows a theme from familiar content to the unfamiliar classical world and equips the listener with an intellectual framework for understanding issues in the classical world with a sort of modern mnemonic. The episodes are not organized in a hierarchical way. The information from one episode overlaps with that of another to give listeners the ability to make connections between different concepts depending on their engagement and interest in any particular topic. Ultimately, the aim of the project was to create a medium for people to engage with concepts in classical scholarship by bringing their own experiences from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds. Through this interplay of the modern and the ancient, we can find new ways in which the classical world informs our understanding of modern cultural phenomena, but also ways in which the modern world can help us better articulate classical concepts. (shrink)