4,024 research outputs found
The agential fork : the hidden consequences of agency for plenitude in David Lewis' thesis of genuine modal realism
No full textIn this dissertation, I argue that David Lewis' abductive argument for Genuine Modal Realism (GMR) has the unwelcome, and hidden, implication of being unable to
accommodate agent causation theories of free will. This is because of his formulation of plenitude, which basically says that every way that a world or a part of a world could be is the way that some world, or part of some world is. This formulation tacitly assumes
that chance and nomological principles are sufficient to account for everything that happens at worlds. However, agent causation theories argue that free will is neither reducible to chance nor determined by physics. My argument recasts a fork argument made by Andrew Beedle. I proceed by arguing that chance-based principles evince an ontologically distinct kind of modality than agent causation principles. However,
plenitude only accounts for the physics/chance-based kind of modality. There is no similar principle of plenitude that can be given for agential modality that does not
collapse into the chance-based principle. But even if such a principle could be found, it would violate the doctrine in GMR that claims worlds are causally isolated. If no agential plenitude principle can be found and there is agential modality, then plenitude fails. If there is no agency at our world, and Lewis’ original formulation of plenitude is correct, then GMR implies no agency at any
world. This is the fork: If there is agency and GMR holds, then either plenitude fails, or isolation fails. But if there is no agency, and GMR holds, then there is no agency at any possible world. The latter prong is too strong a claim for an abductive argument like GMR. The
former proves that GMR cannot accommodate agent-causation theories. GMR loses its neutrality either way, to its detriment
Spaces of the Past, Histories of the Present: An Interview with Stuart Elden and Derek Gregory
No full textThe ontologies of space and territory, our experience of them and the techniques we use to govern them, the very conception of the socio-spatial formations that we inhabit, are all historically specific: they depend on a genealogy of practices, knowledges, discourses, regulations, performances and representations articulated in a way that is extremely complex yet nevertheless legible over time. In this interview we look at the logic and the patterns that intertwine space and time — both as objects and tools of inquiry — though a cross-disciplinary dialogue. The discussion with Stuart Elden and Derek Gregory covers the place of history in socio-spatial theory and in their own work, old and new ways of thinking about the intersection between history and territory, space and time, the implications of geography and history for thinking about contemporary politics, and the challenges now faced by critical thought and academic work in the current neo-liberal attack on public universities and the welfare stat
Book Review: Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin’s The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene
No full textBook Review, Derek Woods
Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. 2018. The Human Planet: How We Created
the Anthropocene. London: Pelican
Derek Whitehead, Gabriela Severa and Lyn Lewis, Centenary morning tea, 2008
No full textLeft to right, Derek Whitehead; Gabriela Severa; Lyn Lewis; and Swinburne staff celebrating Swinburne's centenary 1908-2008 at morning tea, Hawthorn Campus, 8th July 2008
Nobel Prize-winning Author Derek Walcott to Speak March 28
No full textOXFORD, Miss. - Nobel Prize-winning author Derek Walcott is a featured lecturer March 28 at the University of Mississippi
A conversation with Dr. Derek Schuurman about developing responsible technology
No full textIn this episode, I am joined by Dr. Derek Schuurman, professor of computer science at Calvin University and co-author of a new book entitled A Christian Field Guide to Technology for Engineers and Designers with IVP Academic. Today, we talk about how to responsibly develop technology in light of the Christian worldview
Derek Mahon as translator
No full textDerek Mahon has devoted much of his productive life to translation, especially from the French. This paper studies his handling of French texts, distinguishing those which he has freely recreated from those which he has assimilated to his own style and those where he has made himself subservient to the character of the original author. Attention is drawn to his inventiveness, his wit, his moderation and rationality, his concern for effective and relevant communication with the reader, his rhythmic sense and his concern for emphasis and coherence. It is argued that the practice of translation affords Mahon the opportunity to write "at one remove" from direct feeling, and in so doing to combine breadth of feeling and of cultural reference with self-awareness and self-discipline
A Different Perspective (?): Air Warfare in Derek Robinson’s Post-Memory Aviation Fiction
No full textThe canonical literary epitome of the Great War is, beyond doubt, the infantry soldier trapped in what Paul Fussell called the “troglodyte world” of the notorious trenches. There exists, however, a considerable number of literary accounts devoted to a different ‘space’—and thus allegedly also a different experience—of the conflict. The autobiography by Manfred von Richthofen, and memoirs by Billy Bishop and Cecil Lewis contributed to the fame of the Great War pilots as ‘knights of the air.’ Post-memory literary depictions of air warfare tend to be more ideologically ambivalent. The focus of this paper will be Derek Robinson’s novel War Story (1987), constituting in terms of the chosen historical time of its action the first part of his acclaimed Great War aviation trilogy, including also Goshawk Squadron and Hornet\u27s Sting, to be analyzed within the wider context of the cultural representations of the Royal Flying Corps in 1914–1918. Derek Robinson served in the RAF after the Second World War. He is also the author of the revisionist Invasion, 1940 and, thus, his literary ‘return’ to the Great War, within the context of air warfare, must raise important questions concerning the extent to which he perpetuates or challenges the prevailing myths of the first global conflict of the twentieth-century
A critical edition of Derek Walcott's Omeros
No full textThe thesis is a Critical Edition of Derek Walcott’s Omeros, consisting of a Critical
Introduction and Annotations. The Critical Introduction analyses:
- Narrative
- Settings
- Metaphor and Paronomasia
- Symbolism
- Historiography
- Intertexts
- Dualism
- Autobiography
- Dialects
- Prosody.
The Annotations comment on more than 1000 references that may be obscure and on
specifics of narrative, language and prosody.
This study presents new conclusions about some aspects of Omeros:
- It challenges the prevailing view that the work is written substantially in a
variation of terza rima and shows that regular quatrains predominate.
- It demonstrates ways in which the metrics follow the sense of the narrative and
takes a more balanced position on the use of Caribbean as opposed to classical
metrics than that put forward previously.
- It identifies a paragraphic structure to the verse.
- It proposes a new prosodic structure for the significant Chapter XXX/iii.
- It extends Walcott’s recognised use of numerology into word counting the
names of characters.
- It develops the idea of Walcott’s dualism and his use of pairing and
contradiction as a dialectical method.
- It defines his wide use of paronomasia and shows that many of the puns have a
metaphorical aspect beyond mere word-play.
- It analyses some of Walcott’s symbolism.
- It identifies intertextual links to his earlier works and to some thirty other
writers, and suggests homage to Hemingway and possibly Heaney.
- It provides the first complete analysis of Walcott’s rhyme types in Omeros.
In its analysis of Omeros and in the Annotations it has included commentary from
across the critical literature, to provide some sense of other views on Walcott’s
writing, and has included as many as possible of Walcott’s own comments on Omeros
and on the writer’s task, as a background to understanding the poem
Interview with Derek Nikitas, part 1 of 2 [video]
No full textDerek Nikitas is a faculty member in the Creative Writing MFA Program and author of two recent mystery novels, The Long Division (2009) and Pyres (2007). Nikitas\u27 first novel was nominated for the prestigious Edgar award, and has been optioned for film adaptation by Vox3 Films. His second novel, The Long Division, is receiving rave reviews
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