UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Freud, Modularity, and the Principle of Charity(2010) Gibson, Joel; Rey, Georges; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Within the philosophy of mind, a `hermeneutical' tradition sees psychology as discontinuous with natural-scientific domains. A characteristic ingredient of this tendency is `normativism', which makes obedience to rational norms an a priori condition on agency. In this thesis, I advance an argument against normativism which trades on the notion of a psychological module. Specifically, I show how modules can be envisioned which, because of their high degree of irrationality, challenge the normativist's principle of charity. As an illustration, I describe such a module that incorporates key features of the Freudian `id', and I suggest that Freudian theory generally puts pressure on charity constraints. In sum, I seek to substantially undermine the hermeneutical view of the mind by attacking one of its central pillars. In Chapter 1, after setting out the essential features of hermeneuticism, I sketch the historical background of recent normativism by considering Quine's employment of charity in his theory of meaning and mind. Most centrally, I reject pragmatic and heuristic readings of Quinean charity in favor of one that sees it as a constitutive constraint on attribution. In Chapter 2, I begin to clarify the content of Davidsonian charity, against which--in the first instance--my argument levels. I identify Maximization and Threshold Principles in Davidson's early papers, contrast Davidsonian charity with Richard Grandy's Principle of Humanity, and rebut typical arguments for charity principles. In Chapter 3, after identifying two additional Davidsonian charity principles (a Competence and a Compartment Principle) and describing the conception of a module figuring in my argument, I present my argument in schematic form. Then I critique attempts to rebut my argument through excluding modular processes from the scope of normativism (notably, via a personal-subpersonal distinction). In Chapter 4, I develop my argument in detail by describing a module that embodies basic forms of Freudian wish-fulfilment and demonstrating how it violates charity principles. Further, I rebut possible objections to my use of Freudian theory. In Chapter 5, I canvass various models of Freudian phenomena more generally and suggest that a version of my argument can be run with respect to such phenomena too.Item Integrating Waste Management into the Architectural Pedagogy: Modularity and the Solar Decathlon(2007-12-17) Morris, John Edward; Gardner, Amy; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Throughout our time in architecture school, hours are spent studying sustainability and green design. The concern will always be that these are just studies, not real life situations, and many constraints can be ignored in academia. Studio culture does, however, provide a test bed for new ideas in sustainability, first realizing that it can not be invented overnight but instead is born from the marriage of tradition and convention and blended with modernity. These are important issues in reducing waste on the front end of a design, not in the final stages. Bean counting such as LEED© does not lead to green design, but rather sustainability must be considered holistically from the beginning in dimensioning, material selection, and construction method. The 2007 Solar Decathlon provided an excellent case study to test this idea of sustainability through integration into studio culture, and the marriage of conventional and modern methods.