VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Empathy and narcissism in the work of Molière

The aim of this thesis is to explore the comic art of Molière through the lens of empathy and narcissism, and reciprocally, to show that Molière nourishes Western thought about these phenomena, which can be viewed as opposite ends of a continuum. Every personality has some of each, but the unbalanced egoist has excessive self-love and cannot put himself in another's place. The narcissist is omnipresent in Molière's theatre, but has been heretofore unidentified as such in criticism. This work attempts to fill this gap, and accordingly, my corpus encompasses his 33 extant plays.
Furthermore, these psychological concepts are inherently theatrical, especially with respect to whether or not spectators recognize themselves in characters on stage. There is a dialectic relation between reconnaissance and empathy or antipathy, and, therefore, laughter.
Hence, empathy and narcissism provide a way of looking at characters on stage and at the interaction between the dramatic action and the audience. To explore the former, I investigate endogenous words Molière uses to convey empathy and narcissism; how he portrays empathizers and narcissists visually through their adherence to and breaking of social codes; and how cognition influences their ability to change. For the latter, I demonstrate how early modern querelles surrounding Molière's plays involve these notions; and how his metatheatrical discourses reveal that Molière transports his spectators 'hors de soi': a state that mirrors romantic love and provides pleasure.
Taken in this framework, I argue that Molière's work can be seen as anti-narcissistic; if his spectators knew themselves in the mirror he held up, laughing was a means of precluding blind empathy. Thus, employing tools from modern psychology and neuroscience and notions from the seventeenth century, this thesis evaluates how Molière's characters provide us, today, with a means for better understanding the place of narcissism in our occidental world.

Keywords: seventeenth-century French literature
narcissism in literature
Molière (1622-1673)
literature and psychology
empathy in literature
Advisor: Viala, A
B cell responses to conjugate and polysaccharide meningococcal vaccines

The primary approach to the control of meningococcal disease remains effective vaccination programmes in susceptible populations. Vaccines against serogroups A, C, W and Y offer broad protection against meningococci and both polysaccharide and conjugate quadrivalent vaccines are licensed for use in the UK. Previous studies have assessed the antibody response to meningococcal polysaccharide and conjugate vaccines, but there is limited information on the nature of the B cell response to these antigens. As part of a clinical trial using both polysaccharide (MenACWY-PS) and conjugate (MenACWY-CRM) vaccines in adult volunteers, this DPhil reports the analysis of subsets of antigen specific B-cells produced in response to either vaccine. Prior MenACWY-PS impaired the response to a subsequent dose of MenACWY-CRM. This may be due to MenACWY-PS driving terminal differentiation of antigen specific cells into plasma cells, without replenishment of the memory B cell pool. In addition, despite prior data indicating that it may act as a thymus dependent antigen, the serogroup A polysaccharide component of MenACWY-PS appears to behave in the same way as serogroup C, W & Y polysaccharide components.
Antibody molecules recognise and bind to a multitude of conformational epitopes. This variability is enabled by the complexities of immunoglobulin variable domain gene recombination which can generate a vast potential repertoire of unique antibody molecules. However, the diversity of the antibody repertoire is more restricted against specific antigens and within defined B cell subsets. In this DPhil, ‘next generation’ sequencing technologies were used to investigate the diversity of the B cell variable domain before and after vaccination of adult volunteers. Individuals at baseline were found to have distinct antibody repertoires. Vaccination with a Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) conjugate vaccine resulted in an oligoclonal antibody response, with enrichment for Hib specific canonical antibody sequences.

Keywords: B cells
Neisseria meningitidis
meningitis vaccines
Advisor: Pollard, A
Kelly, D
Social mobilisation and political parties in Mexico

This thesis examines the interactions between political parties and collective actors in the aftermath of regime change in Mexico. It describes different types of partnerships between parties and social organisations observed along a continuum ranging from more autonomous to less autonomous. Alliances were studied within and across levels of government and social sectors. The study found that the structure of political competition and the internal features of social organisations matter strongly in explaining variations in alliances between parties and organisations, as well as the use of unconventional or institutional tactics in achieving their goals within a partnership. These findings have thus implications for the literature on social mobilisation and political representation in new and developing democracies, where social movement actors’ have inaccurately been described as autonomous and opposed to political parties.

Keywords: social movements
political parties
Latin America
Mexico
Advisor: Foweraker, J
Political mobilisation, violence and control in the townships of the Vaal Triangle, South Africa, c.1976-1986

This thesis in an exploration of political mobilisation and its relation to violence and control in the townships of the Vaal Triangle, South Africa, c.1976 to 1986, with a particular focus on the Vaal Uprising of 1984. It examines the emerging conflict between councillors and local communities and the redrawing of imagined boundaries of community. Councillors were demarcated as a collective group that was perceived to be violating the social contract and were regarded as being obstacles to meaningful political change. The period saw the emergence of a localised discourse around accountability, political legitimacy, transparency, freedom and community.
Political subjectivities were influenced by the straddling of everyday experiences of oppression, violence, inequality and poverty on one hand and the impact of ideologies of freedom and liberation on the other. The latter were promoted by the African National Congress in exile, as well as the United Democratic Front, but these organisations did not provide direct leadership. On 3 September 1984 the conflict escalated, sparked by an announcement to increase rent, service tariffs and municipal levies. It led to a large-scale uprising that altered the political and social landscape. It heralded the beginning of the insurrectionary period of the mid-1980s that brought the most sustained challenge to the apartheid regime.
The relative success of the uprising in enforcing concessions from local authorities and the departure of councillors from the townships informed subsequent political strategies. The state attempted to win Hearts and Minds with limited reforms but also used heavy-handed repression. Terror began to escalate and state violence further conscientised and radicalised local communities. Youth activists in particular came to believe that the regime could only be overcome if confronted with strategies of political violence. Alleged informers and black policemen came under increasing attack, reflecting a redrawing of boundaries of community and hindering effective policing.

Keywords: resistance to apartheid
South Africa
South Africa social conditions 1961-1994
History of Africa
political violence
popular protests
apartheid
Advisor: Beinart, W
Rationality: an expansive Bayesian theory

Bayesian epistemology provides a promising framework for a theory of epistemic rationality. But the way in which this framework has been built upon thus far yields an unfortunately mechanical picture of rationality, on which rational agents are mere data crunchers who receive evidential input and spit out numeric credal output. This picture is rightly criticized, most prominently by Bas van Fraassen, for being too narrow and restrictive and thus failing to account for certain features which rationality plausibly has, such as a degree of permissiveness, and for certain unconventional rational phenomena, such as conversions. Unfortunately, van Fraassen’s apt criticism of mechanistic rationality overshoots its mark in seeking to topple the entire Bayesian framework. Bayesian epistemology suffers a guilt by association with the robotic picture. This dissertation aims to restore Bayesianism from the mechanistic but often implicit assumptions which corrode it, and to rebuild, from the Bayesian foundation, an alternative picture of rationality as a property of sentient agents who are capable of understanding and mentally engaging with the objects of their credences. Along the way I account for some basic Bayesian objects such as credence and evidential input. I also accord a central role to the ability of representational experiences, largely sidelined in many Bayesian discussions, to give rise to surprising evidence. On these building blocks I develop theory of rationality, Expansive Bayesianism, which evades the criticisms launched at the robotic picture and shows that Bayesianism itself is a fruitful and powerful framework for a theory of rationality.

Keywords: rationality
philosophy
epistem rationality
epistemic justification
epistemology
bayesianism
Advisor: Hawthorne, J
Eagle, A
Transferable reduced TB models for elemental Si and N and binary Si-N systems

Silicon nitride is a bulk and a coating material exhibiting excellent mechanical properties. The understanding of the complex processes at the nanometre scale gained through experimental research will be enhanced by the existence of a computationally efficient and accurate model that is able to describe the mechanical properties of silicon nitride. Such a model has yet to be proposed.
In this thesis we present a transferable reduced tight-binding (TB) model for the silicon nitride system. More precisely, this model consists of a reduced TB model for elemental silicon, a reduced TB model for elemental nitrogen, and a reduced TB model for silicon nitride. These models are developed within the framework of coarse-graining the electronic structure from density functional theory (DFT) to tight binding (TB) to bond-order potentials (BOPs), and can therefore be used in the future as the stepping stone to develop BOPs for the application in large scale simulations.
The bond integrals employed in the reduced TB models are obtained directly from mixed-basis DFT projections of wave functions onto a minimal basis of atom-centred orbitals. This approach reduces the number of overall parameters to be fitted and provides models which are transferable through the different coarse-graining levels. We provide an example by using the same bond integrals in the reduced TB model for silicon and the preliminary bond-based BOP for silicon. DFT binding energies of ground state and metastable crystal structures are used as the benchmark to which the TB and BOP repulsive parameters are fitted.
In addition to model development, we present an improved methodology when going from TB to reduced TB. By weighting all four σ TB bond integrals equally, we provide a new parameterisation (Eqs. (2.73) and (2.74)) and show that the quality of the silicon reduced TB model can be increased by choosing one of the reduced TB parameters to be distance invariant.
The ingredients, the development methodology, and the quality of each of the four models are discussed in a separate chapter. The quality of the reduced TB models and BOP is demonstrated by comparing their predictions for the binding energies, heats of formation, elastic constants, and defect energies with DFT and experimental values.

Keywords: silicon
transferable
tight binding
reduced tight-binding
model
simulation
bond-order potential
density functional theory
nitrogen
Silicon nitride
Advisor: Kolmogorov, A
Pettifor, D
Drautz, R
Legal professional privilege and its relevance to corporations

This thesis examines the rationale for legal professional privilege (LPP) in relation to corporations, and seeks to identify the optimal scope of a corporate privilege at the beginning of the 21st century. It argues that there is a growing gap between the jurisprudence on LPP and the modern realities of corporate life. Too often courts explain the rationale for the privilege by reference to the needs and behaviour of individuals, and use questionable analogies to justify its extension to corporations. Accordingly, insufficient account is taken of the legal, economic and social realities in which corporations operate.
This has resulted in a privilege rule that rests on questionable foundations and is uncertain in scope. Even when the privilege rules are clear, its scope is often out of alignment with its rationale. This is unacceptable because the cost of a corporate privilege is substantial.
The thesis argues that while corporations are entitled to a right to prepare for litigation in private as part of the right to fair trial, the case for a corporate advice privilege unconnected with litigation is weak. Large private and public companies already have sufficient incentives to consult lawyers in order to obtain legal advice. Corporate governance rules effectively require directors to get advice on important legal matters affecting the company.
Directors of small private corporations, and individual employees of companies, may still need some additional incentive to take advice or talk candidly to corporate counsel in the form of a privilege. The thesis looks at ways of structuring the privilege to protect these groups. Above all, the thesis argues that rules on corporate advice privilege should be formulated in such a way that it helps rather than hinders the goal of increasing corporate compliance.

Keywords: Corporations
Human Rights
Legal Professional Privilege
Advisor: Zuckerman, A
Metamorphic studies in the Scottish Highlands

Conditions of 8kb and 800°C are estimated for sillimanite K feldspar bearing metapelites and garnet-clinopyroxene bearing amnphibolites in Glen Muick. These conditions are inconsistent with the simultaneous nearby presence of equilibrium between andalusite and kyanite. Andalusite in the Glen Muick area is late. The sillimanite zone may have been in part primary. There is a transition without major structural break between Tay Nappe flat belt and the "Banff Nappe".
A dataset has been derived for phases in the system KCMASHCO2. The MHSRK equation of Kerrick and Jacobs (1981) has been used to extract data from mixed devolatilisation equilibria. Heats of formation are in agreement with calorimetrically determined values. Phlogopite equilibria calculated using disordered phlogopite data seem most appropriate to natural metapelite assemblages.
Variations in pressure and temperature have been constrained across the Dalradian using various calibrated reactions. Temperatures vary from about 500°C in the low kyanite zone to 800°C in the sillimanite-K feldspar zone and pressures vary from 4kb to 10kb. Pressure estimates are justified on the basis that they are consistent with the aluminosilicate phase diagram. Rocks from the Central Highlands to Glen Clova underwent a decrease in pressure during evolution through peak metamorphic conditions. Amphibolites from the southern Moines show evidence of a former eclogitic assemblage of early Grampian age or earlier.
High temperature regional metamorphic rocks lie at high structural levels and are are suggested to be an allochthonous unit, the Banff Nappe of Grampian age. The western margin of the Banff Nappe is marked by a temperature maximum to the immediate east, sharp thermal transitions, a train of metabasites and a high strain zone. It is suggested that emplacement of a Banff Nappe resulted in the deformation and metamorphism of structurally lower rocks.

Advisor: Droop, G
Harley, S
Synaptic plasticity during cortical Up-Down state oscillatory activity

The functions of sleep are diverse and still poorly understood, but a strong effect on cognition is evident. An impressive number of studies suggest that particularly deep sleep, with characteristic cortical slow-wave activity, mediates some important beneficial effects on learning and memory, such as memory consolidation and integration. In the light of this, it is surprising how little we know about the specific rules of synaptic plasticity associated with characteristic activity patterns of different sleep stages.
Therefore, using whole-cell recordings from single or synaptically coupled principal cells and two-photon Ca2+ imaging of dendritic spines, I explored how the ongoing network state might promote activity-dependent synaptic plasticity in an in vitro model of the medial entorhinal cortex. This experimental setup allowed precise control over Up-Down state oscillations (cellular membrane potential fluctuations associated with slow-wave activity) – a methodological advantage that is difficult to achieve in vivo.
I found that evoking subthreshold synaptic inputs during the Up state phase of cortical slow-wave activity induced N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor-dependent synaptic weakening. In fact, the spontaneous, intrinsically generated recurrent network activity that underlies cortical Up states was able to depress the very inputs that help maintain it. These findings are in agreement with the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis of sleep, a proposal for which descriptions of clear molecular and cellular mechanisms have been missing. Next, I investigated spike-timing dependent plasticity during Up state periods. I found that input-correlated postsynaptic spiking can prevent synaptic weakening. This suggests that while subthreshold synaptic inputs become continuously weaker during slow-wave activity, correlated inputs become relatively more dominant – a process that could be related to memory consolidation. Finally, I investigated Ca2+ signalling in dendritic spines during Up- Down state oscillations using a novel multi-photon microscope based on the remotefocusing technology. These experiments identified a biochemical signature that could drive the observed plasticity rules.

Advisor: Mann, E
The household and resources of the Lord Edward, 1239-1272

The first part of the thesis examines the resources available to the Lord Edward during the life-time of Henry III, their scope and limitations , and the opportunities they afforded him. It addresses itself particularly to the availability and value of the disparate resources as a means of maintaining his affinity, and to the question of tension between Edward and his father over management and exploitation. The various elements of the resources are examined, with the changes which tilted the balance away from the less flexible returns of the landed estates to those giving greater liquidity. Edward's preference for the latter and his wide-ranging use of credit form a precedent for the financial expedients which characterise his reign. Also examined are the acquisitions which exemplified his military and political successes; the fruits of victory over the Montfortians, and the strategic commissions which culminated in the mass transfer of 1270, epitomising the dominant position Edward had achieved in the kingdom since 1265.
The second part considers the structure of Edward's household departments, and their operation and interaction with his estate administration and wider activities. The backgrounds and associations of the members of the household are analysed, with a discussion of their contributions to Edward's operations. While this evidence throws light on aspects such as the alien element within the household, and the political alignments of Edward and his affinity, a full analysis of the ideological ferment and political vicissitudes has not been attempted. Instead the study of Edward's material and human resources is intended to provide a firmer basis for the general interpretation of the period.
Direct and indirect: a study in the priciple of double effect in Roman Catholic moral theology

The thesis consists of an introduction, five chapters and a conclusion, It attempts to explore the content, scope and significance of the direct-indirect distinction as it has been used in Roman Catholic moral theology. The distinction is viewed in the context of the principle of double effect and against the background of thinking on the human act. The beginnings and evolution of the principle of double effect are the historical framework within which the notions "direct" and "indirect" are considered.
Beginning with Thomas Aquinas's analysis of killing in self-defence (S.T., II-II, q,64, a.7) our investigation explores the discussion of effects that are voluntary in their cause (volunt ariurn in causa) and their identification with effects that are indirectly voluntary (voluntarium indirectum) , This process of assimilation occurred during the 16th and 17th Centuries. Throughout the thesis our primary int erest and model is that of direct and indirect killing.
With the manuals of moral theology - after Alphonsus Liguo ri (d.1787) - the evaluation of indirect effects was discussed under the principle of -double effect. This principle was located in the treatise on the human act, that had recently taken its place among the tracts studying issues in fundamenta l moral theology. In the fourth chapter the refinement of the direct-indirect distinction is explored through a study of per iodical and monograph literature since 1850, Problems with double effect, direct and indirect are discussed by means of our study of such issues as abortion , craniotomy, ectopic pregnancy, hysterectomy together wi th obliteration bombing and other acts causing violent, death.
Chapter 5 traces the thorough going reevaluation of the moral act, double effect and the direct-indirect distinction tl1at has occurred since 1960, The conclusion of the thesis analyzes the influence of the historical context on our understanding of the human act and principle of double effect . This provides the basis of an evaluation of "direct" and "indirect."