VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Time in the book of Qohelet

This thesis explores the theme of time in the book of Qohelet. Throughout his work Qohelet depicts the temporal reality as intensely problematic for human attempts to fashion a meaningful existence, even in the present. A tension is established in the book between the temporal realities of the world and human time-experience. This tension becomes especially apparent in relation to the field of human cognition: our ability to understand and respond properly to our temporal conditions is drawn fundamentally into doubt by Qohelet. The lacking correspondence between temporal reality and human experience of time affects every temporal area in our existence. Qohelet does not allow the human being any meaningful access to either past or future because of the reality of oblivion. Unable to appeal to a meaningful human continuity, individual human beings are unable to make sense of their present existence too.
In addition to analysing Qohelet’s conception of time, the thesis investigates the consequences which this time-conception has for the author’s own philosophical endeavour. Significantly, Qohelet aims to describe an area of reality which he considers fundamentally inaccessible to the human mind. This results in an ongoing tension between statements of knowledge and statements of ignorance; between wanting to investigate human life in time and being unable to do so. This dichotomy is especially apparent in Qohelet’s discussion of the lost temporal horizons of past and future. Past and future cannot be approached directly, but must either be discussed through an examination of their influence on the present or established negatively, simply by stating their inaccessibility. Qohelet’s three main narrative texts demonstrate this particularly clearly. A final chapter uses the analysis of Qohelet’s time conception to undertake a comparative analysis of Qohelet and early layers of 1 Enoch.

Keywords: time in the Hebrew Bible
Ecclesiastes
time in Ecclesiastes
time in 1 Enoch
Advisor: Barton, J
Integration, ambivalence, and mental conflict 

In my DPhil thesis I critique a philosophical ideal of mental organization: that one’s mind ought to be integrated, that is, lack conflicts or ambivalence between mental states, because disintegration is argued to impair one’s agency and undermine one’s well-being. My argument has three parts. In part one, I describe Plato’s maximalist version of the ideal where, if ideally organized, one’s psyche lacks conflicts because one’s rational faculty, aware of what is valuable, harmonises one’s motivational and affective states. I also argue that any dispute about integration is orthogonal to the dispute between value monists and value pluralists. In part two, I contest the integration ideal by criticizing three manifestations of it in contemporary philosophy. I focus on the organization of desire, and on deliberative and affective ambivalence. My arguments have a similar structure. First, I challenge the link between the integrated mind and the purported benefits of unimpaired agency and well-being. On investigation, this apparent connection is largely contingent. Not all conflicts or ambivalence are harmful, and other social or psychological factors are relevant in case where they really are damaging. Secondly, I argue that there are contexts where integration is a form of mental rigidity or harmful impoverishment. Thirdly, I argue that being disintegrated seems morally good in some situations where one manifests fitting states of mind, particularly emotions. In part three, I ask whether integration can be reinterpreted to salvage an alternative ideal. After rejecting a promising candidate found in Kleinian psychoanalytic theory, I offer my own account of integration as a two-part capacity to tolerate difficult mental states (not necessarily bad mental states - excitement can be hard to tolerate), and to avoid being reflectively passive as one’s mental organization changes. This capacity has rational and non-rational elements. Finally, I consider how this reinterpreted capacity relates to the practice of virtue. I conclude that integration is not a virtue, and may be compatible with some viciousness, but it enables one to be virtuous in situations where there are pressures towards being insensitively singleminded.

Keywords: Value
Emotion
Ethics
Organisation
Ambivalence
Integration
Desire
Klein
Conflict
Psychoanalysis
Action
Advisor: Harcourt, E
Foundations and applications of knowledge representation for structured entities

Description Logics form a family of powerful ontology languages widely used by academics and industry experts to capture and intelligently manage knowledge about the world. A key advantage of Description Logics is their amenability to automated reasoning that enables the deduction of knowledge that has not been explicitly stated. However, in order to ensure decidability of automated reasoning algorithms, suitable restrictions are usually enforced on the shape of structures that are expressible using Description Logics. As a consequence, Description Logics fall short of expressive power when it comes to representing cyclic structures, which abound in life sciences and other disciplines.
The objective of this thesis is to explore ontology languages that are better suited for the representation of structured objects. It is suggested that an alternative approach which relies on nonmonotonic existential rules can provide a promising candidate for modelling such domains.
To this end, we have built a comprehensive theoretical and practical framework for the representation of structured entities along with a surface syntax designed to allow the creation of ontological descriptions in an intuitive way. Our formalism is based on nonmonotonic existential rules and exhibits a favourable balance between expressive power and computational as well as empirical tractability. In order to ensure decidability of reasoning, we introduce a number of acyclicity criteria that strictly generalise many of the existing ones. We also present a novel stratification condition that properly extends `classical' stratification and allows for capturing both definitional and conditional aspects of complex structures. The applicability of our formalism is supported by a prototypical implementation, which is based on an off-the-shelf answer set solver and is tested over a realistic knowledge base. Our experimental results demonstrate improvement of up to three orders of magnitude in comparison with previous evaluation efforts and also expose numerous modelling errors of a manually curated biochemical knowledge base.
Overall, we believe that our work lays the practical and theoretical foundations of an ontology language that is well-suited for the representation of structured objects. From a modelling point of view, our approach could stimulate the adoption of a different and expressive reasoning paradigm for which robustly engineered mature reasoners are available; it could thus pave the way for the representation of a broader spectrum of knowledge. At the same time, our theoretical contributions reveal useful insights into logic-based knowledge representation and reasoning. Therefore, our results should be of value to ontology engineers and knowledge representation researchers alike.

Keywords: cheminformatics
computational complexity
Artificial intelligence
decidability
classification
semantic technologies
ontology
Knowledge representation and reasoning
logic
Advisor: Horrocks, I
Krötzsch, M
Motik, B
Phylogenetic interpretations of macroevolution in deep-time

The fossil record yields information on macroevolutionary patterns that remains inaccessible from the study of extant organisms alone, presenting a natural laboratory for us to test hypotheses about the long-term drivers and processes of evolution. Fossil data are therefore increasingly incorporated into evolutionary analyses, both on their own and in combination with neontological data. Phylogeny (an explicit hypothesis of the evolutionary relationships between taxa) can be used as a framework to enable direct comparison of results of comparative methods across many different timescales and taxa, and is now commonly used in investigations of fossil data. This represents an important step towards a unified approach, however, it is not yet fully understood what the effect of using fossil data is on the results of downstream phylogenetic comparative methods, which were originally developed with only living taxa in mind. In this thesis I explore the validity of phylogenetic interpretations of fossil record data. I begin with only taxonomic classification and show that this can in some cases substitute for a cladistically inferred phylogeny in phylogenetic comparative methods, without biasing results. Moving on to scenarios where a timescaled phylogeny is available I investigate the relationship between phylogeny and extinction in the geological past, show that phylogenetic clustering of extinction was common in tetrapods, and present a summary of the ways in which fossil data biases this measurement. Finally, with timescaled phylogenies and a detailed continuous trait dataset available, I interrogate the fossil record of Sauropterygia to uncover the processes of evolutionary change in this highly labile clade. By comparing the results of a suite of phylogenetic comparative methods I demonstrate that neck length evolved through changing vertebral counts rather than somite growth; that the clade experienced a release in evolutionary constraint at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary; and that evidence does not support evolution towards a stationary adaptive peak as a suitable model for phenotypic change in the clade.

Keywords: evolution
palaeobiology
fossil
Sauropterygia
phylogenetic comparative methods
Advisor: Friedman, M
Elegaic materialism: the poetry and art of Susan Howe

The American poet Susan Howe (1937-present) began her career as a visual artist, but owing to a dearth of information about her early collages it has been difficult to say anything substantive about how they might have shaped her poetic practice. In 2010, she placed her collages on archive. Along with a number of personal interviews with Howe, this heretofore unavailable material has enabled me to consider Howe's subsequent work in a new light and to establish significant links between her early visual aesthetics and the poetics of bibliography, historiography, and elegy for which she is now known.
Howe's collages, like her poetry, focus on details that are at risk of vanishing from cultural memory and printed record. For this reason, I argue that her work evinces an 'elegaic materialism', or a way of reading, viewing, and thinking about texts that is attuned to loss. If “history is the record of the winners,” as Howe says, then one way of rescuing marginalized perspectives is by regarding manuscripts as drawings, thereby rescuing the concrete particulars deemed irrelevant by editors and historians. As Howe's late work turned increasingly toward elegy, her early aesthetic contributed to a nuanced poetics of personal loss and to a series of astonishing new formal tropes.
The Introduction to this thesis discusses Howe's materialism in the context of current literary theory and textual scholarship. Chapter 1 concerns itself with Howe's art historical context. Chapter 2 analyses a selection of her word-drawings. Chapter 3 considers Howe's transition to poetry. Chapter 4 addresses her turn to archival documents in her middle period. Chapter 5 looks at the influence on Howe of documentary film, especially in connection with the task of representing a lost loved one, and Chapter 6 discusses her two most recent elegies, The Midnight and THAT THIS. A Coda completes the circle by once more considering Howe in the context of the visual arts at the moment she was selected to exhibit at the 2014 Whitney Biennial.

Keywords: minimal art
nominalism
Susan Howe
History of the Book
poetics
materialism
minimalism
Advisor: Bush, R
Insurance design for developing countries

Over the last ten years there has been a renewed interest in providing agricultural insurance in developing countries. However, voluntary demand for unsubsidised insurance products has been low, particularly from the poorest farmers.
Chapter One presents a model of rational demand for hedging products, where there is a risk of contractual nonperformance. Demand is characterised and bounded for risk averse and decreasing absolute risk averse decision makers. For constant absolute and relative risk averse utility functions, demand is hump-shaped in the degree of risk aversion when the price is actuarially unfair, first increasing then decreasing, and either decreasing or decreasing-increasing-decreasing in risk aversion when the price is actuarially favourable. The apparently low level of demand for consumer hedging instruments, particularly from the most risk averse, is explained as a rational response to deadweight costs and the risk of contractual nonperformance. A numerical example is presented which suggests that some of the unsubsidised weather derivatives currently being designed for and marketed to poor farmers may in fact be poor products.
Chapter Two presents experimental evidence collected from a framed microinsurance lab experiment using poor subjects in rural Ethiopia. In line with the theoretical model of Chapter One, demand for actuarially unfair index insurance is hump-shaped in wealth, first increasing then decreasing. In contrast with recent field experiments where it is not possible to demonstrate that low demand for indexed insurance is →olow′,useofalabora→ryexperimentwithanobjectivelyknownj∮probabilitydistributionallows∥a∥tivestatements→bemadeabouttheobserved≤velofdemand.Theobserved≤velofdemandfor∈dex∈surance∈theexperimentishigherthanthedecreasing|o|luteriskaverseupperboundofChapterO≠,sug≥st∈gt
ˆ
⊂
jectsboughttoo much' index insurance.
Chapter Three presents a vision of insurance design for the poor. Technically optimal arrangements involve insurance providers, such as microinsurers or governments, acting as reinsurer to groups of individuals who have access to cheap information about each other, such as extended families or members of close-knit communities, who in turn offer mutual insurance to each other.

Advisor: Mukerji, S
Stefan, D
Electron-lattice coupling in conjugated polymers

The possibility of a number of applications has fuelled the study of conjugated polymers for some years. Because of the level of electron-lattice coupling in these materials, it is necessary to perform self-consistent calculations of electronic wave functions and atomic positions in order properly to study the defects responsible for their behaviour.
Early empirical methods for performing such self-consistent calculations have proved remarkably successful in many of their predictions, but have still displayed certain shortcomings, primarily due to their failure satisfactorily to treat electron-electron interaction. They are still useful in a number of cases, however, and have been used here to derive some results which have not been obtained elsewhere, or which have only been derived in a more time-consuming manner than is necessary.
This thesis is primarily concerned, though, with the development of a method which enables semi-empirical Hartree-Fock theory to be used in a self-consistent manner. The method is novel in that it performs the atomic relaxation and wave function calculation simultaneously and requires no numerical derivatives to be calculated. Both of these features lead to a method that is extremely efficient in terms of computer time and which can therefore reasonably be applied to molecules sufficiently large to model conjugated polymers.
The results obtained by this new method are shown to be able to account for most of the shortcomings of the earlier methods, in particular their failure satisfactorily to explain the quenching of luminescence in cis-polyacetylene and their poor predictions of the relative strengths of the two photoinduced absorption peaks in polythiophene. The ability of trans-polyacetylene (t-PA) to support a novel type of dynamic defect known as a breather is also verified. A quantitative estimate is made of the mobility of the fundamental defect in t-PA, known as a soliton, and this is in good agreement with experiment.

Advisor: Hayes, W
Stoneham, A
Hayes, D
Bayesian methods for the construction of robust chronologies

Bayesian modelling is a widely used, powerful approach for reducing absolute dating uncertainties in archaeological research. It is important that the methods used in chronology building are robust and reflect substantial prior knowledge. This thesis focuses on the development and evaluation of two novel, prior models: the trapezoidal phase model; and the Poisson process deposition model. Firstly, the limitations of the trapezoidal phase model were investigated by testing the model assumptions using simulations. It was found that a simple trapezoidal phase model does not reflect substantial prior knowledge and the addition of a non-informative element to the prior was proposed. An alternative parameterisation was also presented, to extend its use to a contiguous phase scenario. This method transforms the commonly-used abrupt transition model to allow for gradual changes. The second phase of this research evaluates the use of Bayesian model averaging in the Poisson process deposition model. The use of model averaging extends the application of the Poisson process model to remove the subjectivity involved in model selection. The last part of this thesis applies these models to different case studies, including attempts at resolving the Iron Age chronological debate in Israel, at determining the age of an important Quaternary tephra, at refining a cave chronology, and at more accurately modelling the mid-Holocene elm decline in the British Isles. The Bayesian methods discussed in this thesis are widely applicable in modelling situations where the associated prior assumptions are appropriate. Therefore, they are not limited to the case studies addressed in this thesis, nor are they limited to analysing radiocarbon chronologies.

Keywords: Chronology building
Trapezoid
Archaeology
Bayesian modelling
Model averaging
Advisor: Bronk Ramsey, C
Petrarch in English:

This thesis is concerned with one key aspect of the reception of the vernacular poetry of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), namely translations and imitations of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Rvf) and Triumphi in English. It aims to provide a more comprehensive survey of the vernacular Petrarch’s legacy to English literature than is currently available, with a particular focus on some hitherto critically neglected texts and authors. It also seeks to ascertain to what degree the socio-historical phenomena of religion, politics, and culture have influenced the translations and imitations in question. The approach has been both chronological and comparative. This strategy will demonstrate with greater clarity the monumental effect of the Elizabethan Reformation on the English reception of Petrarch. It proposes a solution to the problem of the long gap between Geoffrey Chaucer’s re-writing of Rvf 132 and the imitations of Wyatt and Surrey framed in the context of Chaucer’s sophisticated imitative strategy (Chapter I). A fresh reading of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella is offered which highlights the author’s misgivings about the dangers of textual misinterpretation, a concern he shared with Petrarch (Chapter II). The analysis of Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion in the same chapter reveals a hitherto undetected Ovidian subtext to Petrarch’s Rvf 190. Chapter III deals with two English versions of the Triumphi: I propose a date for Lord Morley’s translation which suggests it may be the first post- Chaucerian English engagement with Petrarch; new evidence is brought to light which identifies the edition of Petrarch used by William Fowler as the source text for his Triumphs of Petrarcke. The fourth chapter constitutes the most extensive investigation to date of J. M. Synge’s engagement with the Rvf, and deals with the question of translation as subversion. On the theoretical front, it demonstrates how Synge’s use of “folk-speech” challenges Venuti’s binary foreignising/domesticating system of translation categorisation.

Keywords: Surrey
Petrarch
Amoretti
Trionfi
Astrophil and Stella
Canzoniere
Triumphi
RVF
Reception of Petrarch
Spenser
William Fowler
Triumphs
Synge
Sidney
Petrarca
Chaucer
sonnet sequence
Henry Parker
Epithalamion
sonnet
Lord Morley
Italian influence on English literature
translation of Petrarch
Wyatt
Advisor: McLaughlin, M
Communication and hope in Thomas Bernhard's later prose writings

The aim of this study is to make an original contribution to the body of scholarship on the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-89) by presenting a text-based investigation of his five-part autobiographical cycle (Die Ursache (1975), Der Keller (1976), Der Atem (1978), Die Kälte (1981), and Ein Kind (1982)), and the prose narratives, Beton (1982) and Auslöschung (1986).
In the Introduction, I detail the method adopted to construct the argument of the thesis, after discussing pertinent aspects of Bernhard criticism and its reluctance to approach the prose fiction from a textual perspective. Chapter I examines specific stylistic devices and themes found in the autobiographies and relates them to the emergence of a greater narratorial desire to communicate with the reader and a nascent sense of personal hope. After the tortuous narratives of the sixties and early seventies which made Bernhard's reputation as a nihilistic, negative writer, the autobiographical pentalogy gives evidence of a lighter, more direct expression. The second chapter, on Beton, focuses on a number of themes (human contact, perfectionism, and music and literature) which reveal a more positive outlook in the aftermath of the autobiographical project. The third chapter, on Auslöschung, concentrates on a protagonist who has achieved considerable personal fulfilment and who manages to overcome the emotional and psychological obstacles which his predecessors in Bernhard's prose were unable to surmount.
The aim of the thesis, to expose and analyse the aspects of communication and hope recurrent in Bernhard's prose works after 1975, is achieved through close reading reinforced by pertinent biographical and literary evidence. It is hoped that, by undertaking a critical examination of selected narratives, this thesis fills a critical lacuna in the substantial secondary material on Bernhard.

Advisor: Robertson, R