VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Logical Form and the Limits of Thought
Keywords: Nonsense
Normativity of logic
Philosophy of logic
Rule-following
Theory of understanding
Thinking

What is the relation of logic to thinking? My dissertation offers a new argument for the claim that logic is constitutive of thinking in the following sense: representational activity counts as thinking only if it manifests sensitivity to logical rules. In short, thinking has to be minimally logical. An account of thinking has to allow for our freedom to question or revise our commitments – even seemingly obvious conceptual connections – without loss of understanding. This freedom, I argue, requires that thinkers have general abilities to respond to support and tension among their thoughts. And these abilities are constituted by following logical rules. So thinkers have to follow logical rules. But there isn’t just one correct logic for thinking. I show that my view is consistent with logical pluralism: there are a range of correct logics, any one of which a thinker might follow. A logic for thinking does, however, have to contain certain minimal principles: Modus Ponens and Non-Contradiction, and perhaps others. We follow logical rules by exercising logical capacities, which display a distinctive first-person/third-person asymmetry: a subject can find the instances of a rule compelling without seeing them as instances of a rule. As a result, there are two limits on illogical thinking. First, thinkers have to tend to find instances of logical rules compelling. Second, thinkers can’t think in obviously illogical ways. So thinking has to be logical – but not perfectly so. When we try to think, but fail, we produce nonsense. But our failures to think are often subjectively indistinguishable from thinking. To explain how this occurs, I offer an account of nonsense. To be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. Our use of nonsense within the pretence relies on the role of logical form in understanding. Finally, while the normativity of logic doesn’t fall directly out of logical constitutivism, it’s possible to build an attractive account of logical normativity which has logical constitutivism as an integral part. I argue that thinking is necessary for human flourishing, and that this is the source of logical normativity.
Interracial Couples and Parenting: An Exploration of Interracial Couples’ Experiences with Parenting Mixed-race Children in the Greater Toronto Area
Keywords: interracial couples
mixed-race identity
parenting

The number of interracial couples in Canada continues to rise, particularly in metropolitan regions such as the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) with a consequent increase in the number of mixed-race children. The importance of fostering positive racial identities in mixed-race children is well documented. However, there is little research investigating the processes through which interracial couples parent their children together or how they make meaning of their parenting experiences. To address this deficiency, the purpose of the current study was to explore the joint experiences of six interracial couples who were negotiating the parenting process of their school-aged mixed-race children. By employing interpretative phenomenological analysis, in-depth interviews were used to generate descriptions of the interracial couples’ experiences across three relationship phases (i) courtship and early stages of the interracial relationship, (ii) becoming parents and early parenting experiences, and (iii) experiences with co-parenting school-aged mixed-race children. Across these relationship phases, this analysis yielded three core transecting themes that reflected the experiences of jointly parenting mixed-race children. First, participants described how relationship and parenting experiences led to transformative racial identity experiences, both as individuals and couples. Second, experiences with their racially different partner, their mixed-race children, and the external world, led to the realization of their unique experience as interracial couples and mixed-race families in the context of a racially stratified society. Third, in terms of parenting, all six couples described the process through which they framed their interracial status as a strength for their mixed-race children, referencing the benefits of dual racial exposure. Parenting had clear impacts on the racial identity formation processes of the six interracial couples which manifested differently across different phases of their interracial relationship. Generally, the needs of mixed-race families are unique and in the context of a rapidly shifting sociopolitical climate, the perspectives of these families need to be understood to ensure the provision of culturally sensitive and competent practice and pedagogy. Although the findings of this study are an important contribution, more extensive research is needed to further understand the strengths and needs of interracial partners and their journeys of parenting their mixed-race children.
“We’re really trying, and I know it’s not enough”: Settler Anti-pipeline Activists and the Turn to Frontline Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples
Keywords: activism
critical philanthropy
environmentalism
feeling rules
solidarity
whiteness

The logics and worldviews of settler environmentalism perpetuate settler colonialism and white supremacy; settler environmentalism has consistently failed to work in relation to Indigenous peoples in a good way. This research engages with the efforts of settler anti-pipeline activists in Canada to solve these problems of environmentalism by turning to frontline solidarity. Frontline solidarity relies on systems of power; the framework hinges on a solidarity group making use of their privileges to support the struggles of a frontline group while simultaneously attempting to de-emphasize this privilege through, for example, following frontline leadership. Frontline solidarity does not solve settler environmentalism; it does not enable settler environmentalists to become the “good ally.” However, this framework at times enabled settler anti-pipeline activists to productively support Indigenous-led legal battles and land defence. Separating the goal of stopping pipelines from the goal of supporting Indigenous self-determination has the potential to clarify roles for settlers on Indigenous land. Layered onto the contradictions of frontline solidarity, many of the settler activists worked at environmental organizations and were funded to stop pipelines through a collective campaign. Like frontline solidarity, philanthropy hinges on white settler power and fails to address systemic injustices. The organizational requirements of funded campaign engagement and the campaign absorbing solidarity goals into an “outreach” model worked primarily to maintain settler power. At the same time, the flexibility of campaign networks provided opportunities for relationships and learning between settler activists and Indigenous peoples; while not themselves decolonizing, the relationships provide an opening to work together against climate change and colonial power. Settler anti-pipeline activists are steeped in multiple oppressive systems and were at times “called out” for racist or colonial actions. Narratives of Indigenous trauma and white fragility led to the creation of a feeling rule in which settler activists did not allow themselves to feel the pain these callouts caused. This contributed to burnout and limited opportunities for learning and healing. This dissertation contributes to the literatures on solidarity, social movements, critical philanthropy, and politics of emotion. As an activist researcher, I am also motivated to contribute to the transformation of my own movement.
Vibratory Communication in the Black Widow Spider, Latrodectus hesperus (Araneae: Theridiidae)
Keywords: biomechanics
Black widow spider
Multicomponent signal
Signal structure
Signaling mechanisms
Vibratory communication

Several studies have described vibration producing behaviours across many web-building spiders, and vibratory communication is thought to play an integral role during male-female interactions. Despite the presumed ubiquity of vibratory communication in this group of spiders, very little is known about the characteristics and functions of the signals involved, how signals are produced and transmitted through webs, or how vibrations are perceived. In this thesis, I used the western black widow spider, Latrodectus hesperus, as my focal organism, to investigate the details of vibratory communication from sender to the receiver. My results show that male L. hesperus courtship vibration signals comprise three distinct components (abdominal tremulation, bounce and web plucks), each produced using different signal production mechanism. Larger males produced bounce and web pluck signals with high power, which suggests that these signals may carry information about male traits. I found that during the early phase of courtship, males produced these different signal components haphazardly, with little temporal organization among the individual components (unstructured signaling). However, during the later phase of courtship, as males approach females, males intermittently organized signal components into a stereotyped temporal sequence (structured signaling). I tested the importance of these composite multicomponent signals, and found that males that displayed these structured signals more often were more likely to successfully copulate and copulate sooner. Vibrations arriving at the females are transmitted through the legs. My results show that the more distal joints of the legs (i.e. tarsus-metatarsus joint) move more to higher frequencies, and more proximal joints are tuned to lower frequencies. This suggests that female leg-joints play an important role in segregating vibration frequencies, and this may have important implications for prey/mate discrimination, as well as vibration source localization. These results show that L. hesperus males employ multiple signal components during courtship, and provide novel insights into emergent signal complexities in a web-building spider, previously thought to be ‘simple’ signalers. Additionally, the spider body mechanics can play a key role in influence vibration perception.
From Here To: Everyday Wayfinding in the Age of Digital Maps
Keywords: arts-based research
critical information studies
digital maps
everyday information practice
visual grounded theory
wayfinding

These days, navigation is often associated with “asking” Google Maps for directions. Over one billion people per month use Google Maps and Google estimates that one-in-three mobile searches are location-related. What do spatial information practices look like in these everyday information contexts? To explore this question of street-level wayfinding, I used exploratory performance-based and drawing-based research. I approached people in the streets of Toronto, New York, Amsterdam and London, and asked for directions, requesting they draw directional instructions for me. In total, I collected 220 sets of drawings, corresponding observational fieldnotes, and 20 interviews. Following collection, I used visual grounded theory and situational analysis to assess the data from the interdisciplinary theoretical perspective of everyday life information seeking and critical information studies research. Findings show the complexity of everyday wayfinding, negotiated through the tacit and material forms of technological interventions, urban configurations, and information affects. I present the findings through a qualitative account of these modalities at play on the ground. The empirical findings build a theoretical framework to evaluate Google Maps’ affordances and discursive framings. In addition to establishing a critical information framework, my work contributes methodologically to the study of spontaneous and ad-hoc drawings in information studies. My research follows a trajectory of emerging critical internet scholarship in information studies, positioned in the context of everyday information practices.
Summary Measures for Quantifying the Extent of Visit Irregularity in Longitudinal Data
Keywords: Inverse-Intensity Weighted Generalized Estimating Equations
Irregular Visits
Longitudinal Data
Missing Data
Repeated Measures
Summary Measures

A common feature of observational longitudinal data is variability in the timings of visits across individuals. Irregular visits merit careful scrutiny as they can be associated with the outcome trajectory and lead to biased results if not properly addressed. Similar to missing data, exploring the extent of irregularity is important because it can help determine whether specialized methods for irregular data are needed. However, there are currently no measures for quantifying the extent of irregularity. This thesis proposes visual and numerical measures of irregularity which are based on bins constructed across the study duration. To visually assess the extent of irregularity, the bin widths are varied and the mean proportions of individuals with 0, 1, and >1 visits per bin are plotted. With perfect repeated measures, the mean proportions of individuals with 1 visit per bin are 1, and the mean proportions of individuals with 0 and >1 visits per bin are 0. Missingness leads to individuals with 0 visits per bin while irregularity leads to both individuals with >1 visit per bin and individuals with 0 visits per bin. To numerically assess the extent of irregularity, we use the area under the curve (AUC) of the mean proportions of individuals with 0 visits per bin plotted against the mean proportions of individuals with >1 visit per bin. To be an effective measure of irregularity, the AUC should increase with increasing irregularity, be intuitive, and be invariant to sample size and follow-up length. Ideally, the AUC should be invariant to missingness, but the AUC increases as the level of missingness increases due to increased proportions of individuals with 0 visits per bin. To allow judgement solely on irregularity and not missingness, likelihood-based estimation will be used to derive an AUC assuming no missingness. Simulation results demonstrate that the AUC increases with increasing irregularity and is invariant to sample size and the number of scheduled measurement occasions. Overall, these measures can lead to an improved quality of statistical analyses by informing the modelling approach. Health administrative data are increasingly available, but are susceptible to irregular visit timings. It is thus crucial to assess the extent of irregularity to inform the need for specialized methods for irregular data that minimize the potential for biased results.
Narratu Sunt Digna: Aspects of the Socio-economic Life of Rome's Plebs, 275-455 CE
Keywords: Demography
Guilds
Labour
Late Antiquity
Rome

This dissertation provides a wide-ranging analysis of the socio-economic life of the non-elite urban population of Rome and their interactions with the institutions and administration of the city from 275 until 455 CE. The traditional view holds that during this period the life of the plebs Romana became measurably worse, as empire-wide reforms precipitated a continual numerical decline in the city's population and shrinking economic opportunity. I demonstrate, on the contrary, that a large portion of the city's population experienced vitality on a level not hitherto appreciated by historians of the later Roman empire. I first address the issue of the size of Rome's population. Through a close reading of various complex pieces of epigraphic and legal evidence pertaining to the city's food supply, I propose that Rome not only maintained a high population throughout the fourth century, but that there was also likely an increase in the number of those entitled to free food distributions, the so-called plebs frumentaria. The consequence of this argument is that a larger portion of population now possessed the opportunity to acquire wealth well above the level of subsistence. I then consider by what means Rome's plebs might access and control their wealth. Work, labour, and urban commerce prove to be useful heuristic categories. The epigraphic record reveals that members of the plebs Romana continued to identify with their work as they had during the earlier Empire, while juridical and literary texts disclose that this same population came to be defined by and fix to their work. It is here that this dissertation intersects with the broader scholarly discourse on work and labour, as I show that membership in professional associations — collegia and corpora — was imposed on all craftsmen, artisans, and entrepreneurs. Far from functioning as restrictive and oppressive institutions, these associations formed an increasingly interdependent relationship with the administrative apparatus of the city, which members both collectively and individually exploited to their political and economic benefit. The study concludes with systematic analysis of the construction industry in Rome as a case study both of collegial activity and of population dynamics. Late-antique Rome, it is shown, was a city in which a section of its non-elite population, its plebs, were able to turn the new demands imposed on them by the city and the state to their social and economic advantage.
Princess Point: Inter-community Variation and Localized Settlement-subsistence Practice
Keywords: Communities of Practice
Environmental Archaeology
Northeast Archaeology
Palaeoethnobotany
Princess Point

This dissertation examines Princess Point macrobotanical remains as a means of identifying and exploring the nature and extent of inter-community variations in local subsistence practice, small-scale habitat production, and the operation of settlement-subsistence based communities of practice in Early Late Woodland Period (AD 500-1050) southern Ontario. The Princess Point Complex is one of a number of pre-contact cultures that existed throughout South-Central Ontario during the Early Late Woodland period and are likely ancestral to later Iroquoian societies (Saunders 2002). By employing multi-scalar, comparative analyses of eight Princess Point botanical assemblages, this project seeks to identify the critical similarities and differences between them as a means of better understanding to what extent Princess Point communities were either characterized by a strict adherence to a single, uniform settlement-subsistence strategy or differentiated from one another by variations in localized human-environmental relationships as evidenced by a reliance on differing suites of target resources. This study is also concerned with generating understandings of the social dynamics and environmental factors which may have underlain Princess Point settlement-subsistence decision-making processes. This study also explores the relative importance of localized subsistence-based communities of practice among the Princess Point and the degree to which Traditional Ecological Knowledge may have either been shared via cooperative action or developed in relative isolation via the independent operation of otherwise neighbouring or spatially affiliated pre-contact communities. Beyond the identification of significant inter-community variability in localized subsistence practice and site-level subsistence-based communities of practice among the Princess Point, this study also identifies a number of broader trends in Princess Point human-environmental relationships and highlights the flexible, often idiosyncratic, nature of localized Princess Point settlement-subsistence decision-making processes. Evidence presented in this study also suggests the parallel operation of a broader, more regionally consistent community of practice at the regional level. This study also engages more directly with questions pertaining to the organization of Princess Point community social dynamics. In this regard, Princess Point subsistence-based communities of practice appear to have represented largely autonomous social units within a broader, overarching cultural landscape characterized, in part, by an adherence to a shared set of traditional subsistence practices.
Tone-Metric Analysis: A Novel Approach to the Study of Form and Performance in North German Baroque Organ Music
Keywords: form
fractal
organ
performance
tactus

This dissertation studies the principles and applications of tone-metric analysis, a novel analytical approach based on the assumption that beat (or tactus) is a combinatorial set of strong and weak beats. As such, tactus can be studied using mathematical tools such as Pascal’s and Sierpinsky’s triangles, which help to quantitatively describe and model, through graphic constructs such as tone-metric waves and trees, the relationship between rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic designs as unfolding functions of the tactus’s regularity. The specificity of these functions, and their lengths and positioning within a piece, have consequences for the performance and perception of music, the analysis of which is at the core of this dissertation. Therefore, waves and trees can be used to describe phenomena such as the perception of tension and relaxation in music, and to initiate the analysis of how agogic elements can be integrated and rendered in performance. Because of its ability to describe and graphically model the elusiveness of music’s unfolding in time, tone-metric analysis is an ideal tool for the analysis, performance, and perception of repertoires that display a high degree of phrasal and formal variety, and are improvisatory in character. This dissertation studies primarily North German organ music, focusing on stylus ii phantasticus preludes and fantasias, chorale-based pieces, and fugues by Johann Sebastian Bach, Nicholaus Bruhns, Dietrich Buxtehude, Nicholaus Hanff, and Johann Pachelbel. For comparison, the dissertation also explores brief passages from later repertoires (classical, romantic, and extended tonal) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frédéric Chopin, and Alban Berg. A major novelty of tone-metric analysis is its approach to the combinatorial and geometrical nature and features of tactus, and the consequent generation of an algorithmic basis for the analytical discourse. This approach raises questions about the nature of the relationship between tactus and other musical parameters such as melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic elements, and about their role in shaping phrasal and formal designs in music governed by a steady beat. The thesis thus recommends a new look at the fundamental nature of tactus as a conceptually combinatorial and fractal space for music.