Browsing by Subject "Intentionality"
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Item Emotional intentionality as a conative state(2011-12) Hwang, Woo-Young; Higgins, Kathleen Marie; Phillips, StephenWhen we consider the active involvement of a subject of an emotional state, we have to say that intentionality of emotional states is conative rather than cognitive. Emotion is much closer to desire or a conative state than a belief or perception. Since a conative state is successful when it is carried out, a conative intentional state is more related to action toward others and events rather than passive perception. So it is important to examine the relation between emotion and action to see emotion as an active response. In the first, second and third chapter of my thesis, I will argue that since perception is too passive to be emotions, it is wrong to insist that emotions are a kind of perception. In the fourth chapter, I will show that it is impossible to have emotions without self-involvement. In the fifth chapter, I will discuss the relation between emotions and action through the cases of brain damaged patients and the Confucianist theory of emotion.Item Identity, intentionality, transformation : one teaching artist’s journey through an applied theatre process(2011-05) Luck, Jennifer Hartmann; Jennings, Coleman A., 1933-; Zeder, Suzan; Weiner, JessicaWhat does it mean to be a Teaching Artist and how does the creation and facilitation of an applied theatre program with youth shape a Teaching Artist’s identity? This thesis follows the journey of one Teaching Artist and the applied theatre project she created and facilitated at The Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in Austin, Texas, surrounding the issues of self esteem and body acceptance. This applied theatre project combined drama-based strategies and creative writing strategies with public performance opportunities to encourage young girls to find their voices in order to promote positive self esteem. The semester long, after-school project was initially entered into by the Teaching Artist as a form of interactive dramaturgy and research, with the intention of developing a one woman play for young audiences about the same issues. But once submerged in the project, the Teaching Artist began to question the ethics of her process; she began to struggle with her identity, her intentionality and the reciprocity found within her work. All educators hope to transform their students; to observe growth and positive change among their pupils, to witness a successful performance event or to behold young people reveling in art making. But this thesis also considers the possibility that some of the greatest transformation in an arts education/applied theatre setting may be found within the educator themselvesItem Non-propositional intentionality(2010-05) Grzankowski, Alex Paul; Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark); Dever, JoshWe often want to explain and predict behavior, both our own and that of others. For various reasons we want to know not only why (in the sense of etiology) someone is doing what he is, but we also have interests in understanding the agent's reasons for which he is acting as he is. Though not uncontroversial, it is common to cite intentional states when offering such explanations. Most philosophers take certain intentional states to be the causes of our actions and to play a role in accounting for the reasons for which one acts. Additionally, most theorists who adopt such a line take the relevant intentional states to be propositional attitudes, most commonly beliefs and desires (or other pro attitudes which relate one to a proposition). In many of our explanations, we do indeed cite beliefs and desires, but we also cite many other psychological states that aren't obviously beliefs or desires. In fact, some of the relevant psychological states don't even appear to be propositional attitudes. In this paper I pursue two lines of questioning, one about the explanations of action and one about intentionality. First, what role is played by these apparently non-propositional attitudes? Such attitudes turn up in Davidson's locus classicus and can be found in the most recent work on action as well, but explications are sparse. Second, are these attitudes in fact non-propositional? Despite appearances to the contrary, one might argue that such states are to be, in some way or other, assimilated to the more familiar propositional attitudes. I resist this line in the second chapter.Item Non-propositional objects of the attitudes(2013-05) Grzankowski, Alex Paul; Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark)I argue that there are irreducibly non-propositional intentional states, mental states that are about things (states such as fearing snakes, liking ice-cream, and so on) but which do not have a propositional content. I provide a positive account of such states and offer philosophical insights concerning concepts and content that emerge once they are recognized.Item Sensory experience and the sensible qualities(2015-05) Cutter, Brian Christopher; Tye, Michael; Pautz, Adam R.; Proops, Ian N; Sainsbury, Richard M; Koons, Robert C; Byrne, Alex; Pruss, AlexanderMy dissertation defends a package of interrelated positions on the metaphysics of the sensible qualities (shape, color, pitch, loudness, flavor, heat, cold, etc.) and sensory experience. It is organized around four questions at the core of philosophical theorizing about the sensible qualities. The first is the question of reductionism: are the sensible qualities reducible to either physical properties (i.e. properties definable in the canonical vocabulary of the physical sciences) or response-dependent properties (e.g. Lockean dispositions to affect perceivers in certain ways)? I put forward novel arguments and refined versions of traditional arguments in support of a negative answer to this question. For at least some of the sensible qualities, including many of those traditionally classified as “secondary qualities,” reductionism is untenable. If I am correct that the sensible qualities are not reducible to physical or response-dependent properties of external objects, the next question arises: do they belong to external objects at all? This is the question of realism. Many philosophers have held that a negative answer to the question of reductionism leads--or should lead--to a negative answer to the question of realism. Against these philosophers, I defend an affirmative answer to the question of realism and respond to arguments from non-reductionism to irrealism. If I am correct that the sensible qualities really belong to external objects but aren’t reducible to any of their physical properties, a third question arises: how are the sensible qualities (especially the so-called “secondary qualities”) related to physical reality? This is the question of integration, a special case of the more general question of how, in Sellars’s terminology, the Manifest Image is related to the Scientific Image. In response to this question, I develop and defend a theory structurally parallel to Russellian monist positions on the mind-body problem. I argue that the Russellian monist framework is actually poorly suited to answer the question it was originally designed to answer--the question of how conscious experience is related to physical reality--but well suited to answer the corresponding question about the sensible (especially secondary) qualities.Item Toward a normative theory of rationality(2009-05-15) Stovall, Preston JohnThis project offers an articulation of rationality in terms of normativity?that what it means to be acting rationally, in thought or in deed, can be understood via a notion of being bound or obliged to certain behaviors given a prior structure that delimits what is rational to assert in a discourse or perform in a society. In the explicit articulation of the role of norms in limning rationality, this project also emphasizes the opportunity and obligation to self-critically assess the value of the metalinguistic and metapractical standards that license rational assertions and behaviors. After an introduction, section 2 examines the role of rational constraint in Kant?s account of representation, concluding that the transcendental story his philosophy leaves us with impels us to look for an immanent socio-linguistic account of the normativity that obliges us to think and behave in certain ways, rather than lodging the force of normativity in transcendentality. Section 3 then examines Robert Brandom?s inferential semantics by addressing prominent responses to Brandom?s program, making explicit two ways in which normativity operates in inferentialism?one at the level of objectlanguage in the articulation of the propositional commitments and entitlements that specify propositional content, the other at the level of the metalinguistic appraisal of the standards that drive object-language inferentialism. Section 4 turns to the theoretical status of normativity and its role in practical behavior, where it is argued that a notion of normativity can underpin a theory of intentional states. Examining positions on naturalism, the author proposes that a causal account of intentionality, made explicit by the prescriptive nature of the theory advanced, provides a naturalist view of normativity for which norms are in explanations of social states as laws are in explanations of physical states. Hence the obligation to self-critically reflect on and revise the norms that delimit ethical behavior in social systems is understood as commensurate with the obligation to self-critically reflect on and revise the norms that delimit warranted assertions in epistemic discourse. The conclusion offers some remarks on the prospects for rational revision in both a discipline?s discourse and a society?s standards of behavior.