VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Logical validity
Keywords: axiomatic theories of truth
higher-order logic
modal logic
logical consequence

This dissertation is about logical consequence. The main points I will defend can be summarised as follows. First, I claim that logical consequence can be understood as truth-preservation under all interpretations of the language. There is no need to use modal notions to define consequence. In chapter one, I argue that domain-variation across different interpretations can be understood in purely interpretational terms, if we take quantifiers to be context-sensitive expressions.
Secondly, I am sympathetic with a substitutional account of logical consequence, where consequence is preservation of truth under all substitutions of the non-logical vocabulary. In chapter two, I extend the substitutional account to modal logic, where the box is read as "It is substitutionally valid that". Modal logic is seen as a way for the system to reflect upon what is valid. Different readings of the box can be provided by restricting the substitutions relevant for the truth of a modal formula.
In the third chapter, I argue that a theory of logical consequence ought to be self-applicable: it should apply to its own language. This is required by our use of logical consequence in philosophical logic, to express the debate between the monist and the pluralist about logical consequence, and to link our theory of what is valid with a theory of valid reasoning and justification.
Finally, in the fourth chapter I suggest that a theory of interpretations of a given language will never really capture all the interpretations of that language. I extend the worry even to theories that admit absolute generality and take higher-order talk to be non-reducible to first-order talk. I argue that, regardless of the order of the theory one is speaking from, there is always an order higher that one can take as one's starting point, and at any further order up the hierarchy, more interpretations of any language become available.
Justice intuitions and popular support for war: a theory of presidential retributive rhetoric
Keywords: retribution
punishment
war
public opinion
political rhetoric
US politics

The popular desire to exact retribution on an adversary is an attractive resource for American presidents to utilise when mobilising support for war. While prior scholarship has identified the critical role of political leaders’ communications in making retribution salient to the public, a fine-grained theory of why, how, and when leaders are likely to employ retributive concepts is yet to be developed. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature by providing a comprehensive theory of retributive rhetoric. The theory draws on multidisciplinary research on ordinary people’s intuitions and decision principles concerning moral blameworthiness and demonstrates how and when U.S. presidents intuitively employ these concepts in their rhetoric directed to the popular audience. It is argued that when a president wishes to intervene militarily, morally salient harms committed against geographically and culturally distant states are most likely to elicit retributive rhetoric. This thesis also argues that creating a sense of popular moral outrage and an attendant desire for retribution may help explain the popularity of aerial bombing strikes as a foreign policy response.
This work is distinguished from prior scholarship in several ways. It integrates many related but disparate strands of investigation into a unifying theory of retributive rhetoric; it models the performative display of retributive rhetoric as a novel form of “emotional mobilisation”; and it departs from the traditional convention of conceptualising international punishment as revenge, instead focusing on the more psychologically accurate theory of retribution. The expectations and implications of the theory are explored through qualitative analysis of three case studies involving military intervention by the United States: entry into World War II following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin crisis precipitating the first official use of military force against North Vietnam, and the 1991 Persian Gulf War following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
In defence of aesthetic attachment: a response to Walter Benjamin's critique of Calderón de la Barca
Keywords: Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels
Calderón
Walter Benjamin
Golden Age Drama

This doctoral thesis makes its case for an aesthetics of attachment. The argument is made against Walter Benjamin’s Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1925), which endeavours to obstruct the immersive experience of its readers. According to Benjamin, the Catholic and “Romantic” dramas by Calderón de la Barca epitomise the dangers of aesthetic attachment. Indeed, he reads the playwright through the lenses of Romantic writers such as A.W. Schlegel, who identify in Calderón’s works the sacred world of magic and religion that the Enlightenment had allegedly repressed. For Jena Romantics, Calderón became the emblem for the fight against what they took to be a “disenchanted” version of everyday life.
Benjamin tells us that such a Romantic endeavour to recreate the divine in the arts is uncritical and irresponsible. He compares Calderón’s dramas with Counter-Reformation buildings, in which the ornamentation — according to Benjamin — mesmerises visitors and obfuscates their ability to appreciate the edifice’s keystone. Hence the danger of aesthetic attachment, in this argument, is that it hinders our critical abilities. As an alternative, Benjamin champions the “ruined” — that is, fragmentary — aesthetics of German Baroque drama. Ursprung therefore recreates a neo-Baroque rhetoric which schools its readers into the position of detached interpreters — the objective being, of course, to hinder feelings of immersion.
This thesis goes back to the Spanish comedia and to the debates about the dangers of fiction in early-modern Spain in order to dismantle Benjamin’s assumptions about Calderón as well as to make a case for popular art. The engagement with Calderón underscores the fact that aesthetic attachment cannot be dispelled and, therefore, that it also plays a central role in Benjamin’s book. Finally, through close readings of La vida es sueño and La dama duende, I show that Calderón calls forth feelings of identification and immersion whilst remaining both critical and thought-provoking.
Homo Maximus: Emanuel Swedenborg and the interaction of soul and body
Keywords: Emanuel Swedenborg
political history
Swedish history
history of science
history of the body
history of the soul
mind-body problem
intellectual history
Enlightenment
history of religion
eighteenth century history
history of medicine
history of anatomy

This thesis investigates the lifelong commitment of the Swedish parliamentarian, assessor of mines, and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) to the topic of soul-body interaction. It is a thematic intellectual biography, rooted in the history of science, religion and medicine, which places Swedenborg’s life and work in the context of Swedish and Scandinavian society, politics and intellectual life. It provides a new narrative about why soul-body was so crucial to him, why it informed almost all of what he did, and why he pursued the topic within an impressively large array of disciplines and research projects across six decades.
My thesis revises a number of understandings about his life, ideas, intellectual interlocutors, and sense of self. First, it tracks his engagement with the soul-body theme earlier than previously thought, and argues that his famous turn towards theology actually occurred during his anatomical studies. This led him to pursue his soul-body work within an anatomically informed cosmological theology, which postulated that the afterlife as a whole constituted the spiritual grand body of God, that he named Homo Maximus (‘the Grand Man’). Second, the thesis shows how Swedenborg relied on his understanding of the soul-body relationship to pursue various other goals; these consisted of attacking the orthodox conception of the doctrine of the Trinity, attempting to restore mankind’s lost Adamic prelapsarian powers, criticizing absolutist monarchy, spreading his millenarian theology of works, and striving to prove the existence of God. In contrast to dominant historiography, the thesis demonstrates that his famous ‘doctrine of correspondences’ was only a by-product of a larger soul-body quest. It also shows how his soul-body research directly informed his conversations with the dead and his elaborate doctrines about the afterlife.
By doing so, the thesis produces a richly contextualised history of the soul-body problem during the Swedish Age of Liberty (Frihetstiden, 1718-1772). It demonstrates the wide variety of applications of early modern soul-body debates, from anatomy to chemistry, taxonomy, theology, epistemology, economics, and politics in a transnational, European and global context. More broadly, Swedenborg’s late fame, and his innovative attempts to bring reason and revelation together show the need for a wider reassessment of his positioning within current scholarship on the religious Enlightenment.
Investigation of magnetic states in molecular systems in cryogenic environments
Keywords: magnetism
spintronics
graphene nanoribbons
spin transport
single-molecule magnets
electronic transport
low-temperature
quantum science
nanoscience

The aim of this Thesis is to increase the fundamental understanding of magnetic molecules, as the ultimate miniaturisation of the electronic component. The considerable interest in molecular nanoscale systems for quantum technologies is hampered by poor understanding of their behaviour when introduced into electronic nanodevices. We investigate the magnetic and electronic states of molecular systems at millikelvin temperature, with the aim of clarifying their behaviour in extreme conditions, and to develop novel instrumentation to further this cause. We do so by concentrating on single-molecule magnets and molecular graphene nanoribbons, first addressed in single crystals and then as single molecules in electronic nanodevices. We observe clear signatures of true magnetism in graphene nanoribbons and reveal connections between the magnetic anisotropy of molecules and their transport properties. The Thesis ultimately contributes to the unification of magnetic and conductive molecular systems and thus serves to advance the field of molecular spintronics.
On the impact of new, light states in some astrophysical and laboratory systems
Keywords: dark matter phenomenology

We investigate the observational consequences of adding hypothetical new states to the Standard Model of particle physics. These additional fields are feebly coupled and much lighter than the electroweak scale. They include dark photons, mil- licharged particles, heavy neutral leptons, as well as light dark matter that couples to electronic spin, among others.
We derive limits on particles that could have been detected by the Big Euro- pean Bubble Chamber (BEBC) in the 1982 CERN-WA-066 beam dump experiment. Light states coupling to photons, as well as heavy neutral leptons, may have been produced in the copious hadronic decays in the beam dump, and the lack of ob- served signal events allows us to place world-leading bounds on both these particles in the GeV mass range.
We also reappraise an existing astrophysical limit on ultra-light dark photons derived from Jupiter’s magnetosphere. The new bosons may kinematically mix with our photon, leading to modifications of electrodynamics at large distances. Observations of the magnetic field around Jupiter allow us to place the strongest constraints to date on the size of the mixing, once we include measurements of the plasma from the recent Juno spacecraft mission.
Lastly, we study the ability of sub-GeV dark matter coupling electronic spin to excite magnons in magnetically ordered materials. We calculate the expected excitation rate in quasi-2d ferromagnetic materials, and show it exhibits strong anisotropies. These materials then allow for directional detection of such dark mat- ter candidates. The near-term possibility of detecting these small meV energy de- positions raises the exciting prospect that this may be a compelling way to discover the particle nature of dark matter.
A nationalist theory of secession
Keywords: territorial rights
secession
nationalism
legitimacy
philosophy of international law
self-determination

In this thesis I argue that nations can have a right to unilaterally secede from a legitimate, non-usurping state. In addition, I argue that they are special in this regard. I argue that there is a presumption in favour of collective autonomy by nations, establishing this claim by showing that co-nationality can be an intrinsically valuable relationship and that this grounds a strong claim to self-determination. I then argue that there are no considerations that always defeat the presumption in favour of collective autonomy by nations—for example, unilateral secession from a legitimate state need not wrong citizens of the remainder state by wrongfully taking territory. As such, nations can have an undefeated claim right to unilaterally secede from a legitimate state.
I establish the second part of the claim above—that nations are special in this regard—in two ways. First, I argue against more permissive accounts of self-determination; accounts that attempt to ground a right to secede for any territorially concentrated group capable of performing the basic functions of statehood and governing in a satisfactory manner. Secondly, I argue that despite the fact that other kinds of group—such as religious groups—share the features in virtue of which nations have a claim to self-determination, the content of these groups’ identities is too narrow to be the basis of a pluralistic political identity, and such, they would wrong members of minority groups within their territory by seceding. This is not true of nations, I argue.
Impact of a VI-polysaccharide conjugate vaccine in preventing Typhoid Fever in an endemic setting, Lalitpur, Nepal
Keywords: typhoid conjugate vaccine
Typhoid Fever
vaccine efficacy

Globally, an estimated 11 to 21 million cases of febrile illness and 117,000 to 161,000 deaths are attributed to typhoid fever each year. Typhoid fever is prevalent mainly in low-resource settings with poor water, and inadequate sanitation and hygiene facilities, with South Asia accounting for a large proportion of the burden. Children bear a substantial burden of the disease. Increasing antimicrobial resistance threatens to limit treatment options for typhoid fever. The WHO, in 2018, recommended the use of a new generation vaccine, typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV), for the control of typhoid fever in endemic regions; however, data from typhoid-endemic settings were lacking. A randomized controlled trial was therefore conducted in Lalitpur, Nepal, to assess the impact of TCV.
In this phase III participant-observer-blind randomized controlled trial, children aged 9 months to under-16 years old, were individually randomized (1:1) to either receive the TCV (Typbar-TCV, Bharat Biotech) or a capsular group A meningococcal conjugate vaccine (MenA) as control, and were followed-up for two years.
The protective efficacy of TCV against blood culture-confirmed typhoid fever at two years was 79.0% (95% confidence interval (CI): 61.9%, 88.5%; P<0.001). Administration of TCV reduced the incidence of typhoid fever (72 (95% CI: 38,123) cases per 100,000 person-years) compared with the control group (Incidence (MenA group): 342 (95% CI 262, 438) cases per 100,000 person-years).
The results of this trial represent one of the first findings confirming that TCV is efficacious in a setting of high endemicity. As a direct result of the findings of this trial and with GAVI support, TCV introduction has been implemented in policy in Nepal. TCV is now routinely administered to children at 15 months of age as part of the national immunization schedule. In this thesis, I describe the design, implementation and results of the trial conducted in Nepal.
The impact of ageing on trauma-related bleeding and coagulopathy
Keywords: haemorrhage
trauma
coagulopathy
ageing

The epidemiology of major injury is changing as the population ages, revealing gaps in our understanding of the management of older patients with trauma-related bleeding. Physiology and haemostasis alter with normal ageing and could attenuate the response to bleeding in an older person. The aim of this thesis was to explore the impact of the ageing trauma demographic on the presentation and management of bleeding and coagulopathy in trauma.
I conducted a systematic review to explore the evidence across age for the use of blood transfusion strategies in acute trauma haemorrhage. I identified 10 randomised controlled trials; older patients were not well represented. There were no randomised trials in older people or trials that evaluated interventions for different age groups.
A Delphi study was undertaken to develop a new consensus research definition for major bleeding in trauma. This definition was applied to the Trauma Audit Research Network registry to assess the effect of age on risk factors for major bleeding. I found older patients with bleeding were less likely to present with tachycardia than younger patients. Multivariable logistic regression using seven risk factors (age, male gender, penetrating injury, mechanism of injury, hypotension and tachycardia and unstable pelvis) showed all were independently significantly associated with bleeding. I also identified a negative interaction between age and penetrating injury, and age and mechanism of injury. Multiple imputation was used to handle missing data and the significance of the risk factors in the imputation model was broadly similar to the complete case analysis model.
The effect of age on coagulation and fibrinolytic parameters was assessed in a multicentre cohort study. In patients who did not receive tranexamic acid, after adjusting for key covariates including presence of bleeding and injury severity, I found older age was associated with heightened fibrinolytic activity and fibrinogen levels compared with younger age.
The programme of work in this thesis has provided new data showing that age has a significant effect on the clinical presentation and risk factors for bleeding. Furthermore, coagulation and fibrinolytic parameters appear altered across age. These data are exploratory and hypothesis-generating. They inform future research areas to assess the effectiveness of different interventions including tranexamic acid across age, develop age-adapted transfusion protocols and prediction models for bleeding that take age into consideration.
Two-dimensional Bose gases in systems with pointlike disorder
Keywords: Bose-Einstein condensate
matter-wave interferometry
Superfluidity
disorder
many-body physics
Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless
ultracold atoms

The effect of disorder on many-body physics is important for our understanding of real-world systems. In particular, the behaviour of phase transitions between superfluid, normal and insulating phases is an area with many unanswered questions and experimental evidence remains scarce in certain important cases. In this thesis, we focus on systems of two-dimensional (2D) Bose gases subjected to a pointlike disorder potential. We trap atoms in radiofrequency dressed potentials and apply the technique of multiple-radiofrequency dressing to create a double-well potential into which we load the ultracold atoms. Matter-wave interferometry allows us to directly probe the local relative phase and its fluctuations between the clouds in the two potential wells. A pointlike disordered optical potential is produced by a high-intensity laser beam which is shaped by a programmable mirror array and passes through clouds in both of the wells. We adiabatically apply disordered potentials of increasing strength to observe their effect on the superfluids in equilibrium in a double-well. We observe that above a critical disorder strength the superfluid undergoes a transition to the normal phase at a lower temperature than that of the disorder-free case, and we characterise this disorder-induced transition. We also study the flow of a 2D superfluid cloud around both a single defect and a random potential and measure the dissipation induced by the obstacles. The absence of dissipation is observed below a critical velocity in the case of a single defect but we find no such dissipationless regime for the disordered potential. We describe the development of a software simulation package for modelling cold-atom systems and the implementation of particle collisions, magnetic trapping and evaporative cooling. Finally, we report on the initial work towards construction of a new cold-atom apparatus, capable of faster sequence times and greater atom numbers, to continue our investigation of many-body physics.
MEASURING and utilising visible light scattering functions for the lunar regolith using the visible Oxford space environment goniometer
Keywords: regolith
lunar
sensing
moon
planetary
solar
apollo
system
photometry
remote

An accurate description of how visible light scatters from the lunar surface enables 1) constraints to be placed on the physical and compositional properties of the surface, using a photometric model such as the Hapke BRDF model, which has nine free parameters related to compositional and physical properties, and 2) more realistic scattering function inputs to be set within thermal models. Until a recent study by Foote et al. in 2010, lunar visible light scattering functions had been theoretically derived using limited laboratory measurements. Within thermal models, unrealistic scattering functions may be partly responsible for modelled temperature discrepancies of up to ~15-50 K (dependent on location)—when compared to remote sensing data from Diviner, onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter—in regions such as polar craters, where light scattering due to surface topography dominates heat transfer. In this project, a laboratory goniometer setup was developed, which was used to measure a suite of visible light scattering functions for Apollo 11 (10084) and Apollo 16 (68810) lunar regolith samples across a wider range of viewing angles than has previously been measured. These samples were characterized in terms of their surface roughness and porosity profiles, and this enabled two of the free parameters within the Hapke BRDF model to be constrained. By fitting the model to the dataset, Hapke parameters could be deduced for the two representative (mare and highlands) regolith samples, and further constraints could be placed on the ‘practical’ size-scale of the model’s slope angle parameter. Thus, the dataset enabled Diviner’s visible-wavelength off-nadir data to be interpreted in a novel way, due to the reduction of free terms within the model. This led to surface roughness and compositional deductions (via the Hapke parameters h_s, b and θ ̅) for seven Diviner targets. Finally, the dataset was used to set more realistic scattering functions within the Oxford 3D Thermal Model, and it was demonstrated that this 1) could affect modelled high-latitude lunar surface temperature profiles by up to ~30 K—as compared to using previously assumed scattering functions—and 2) could increase the minimum depth at which water ice is predicted to be stable in the lunar subsurface by up to ~0.8 m. Hence, this dataset may help to constrain the possible distribution of water ice on the lunar surface, and this may be crucial for future lunar exploration missions such as Luna-27 and Artemis.
Embedding of Selmer group associated to relative Frobenius morphism of an abelian variety into the group of homomorphism of vector bundles
Keywords: Selmer group
abelian variety
relative Frobenius morphism

In this thesis we show that the Selmer group of the relative Frobenius morphism of an abelian variety defined on the function field of a projective and smooth curve C
over a finite field k0
of characteristic p>0
can be embedded into the group of homomorphisms between two natural vector bundles over C
.