VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Bounds of Life: The Role of Death in Schelling's Internal Critique of German Idealism

What conditions the possibility of existentially valuable experience? Against nihilism, the threat that philosophical cognition undermines the very idea of purposiveness, German idealism posits that we are unconditionally conditioned by life, construed as the infinite purposive activity of reason. I reconstruct Schelling’s critique of this project as defending the idea that death conditions or puts into question our rational activity. Scholars tend to read the idealists as rejecting Kant’s idea of an unknowable thing in itself by grounding philosophy on a knowable first principle and tend to situate Schelling as a phase between or a late attack on Fichte and Hegel. Part I gives a systematic account missing on the former, arguing that idealism is an instance of immortalism, which holds that life is the unconditioned condition of rational activity, while death is unconditionally conditioned. Part II gives a historical account missing on the latter, arguing that Schelling is an early and continual critic of idealism on behalf of mortalism, which holds that death unconditionally conditions rational activity. My first argument modifies typical readings of German idealism, revealing a deep connection between its rejection Kant’s idea and its refusal to let death put us into question. My second complicates typical readings of Schelling, casting his mortalism as rehabilitating the idea that something radically outstrips rational activity while representing a regulative ideal. Although Schelling’s mortalism anticipates Heidegger’s, they differ: Schelling aligns death with the goal of systematic knowing, Heidegger with taking over one’s history as care. But Schelling overcomes immortalism, enabling Heidegger’s idea of death. Part III shows this idea is structurally analogous to Kant’s idea of the thing in itself. Immortalism’s failure leaves unsolved two antinomies I argue are formally identical and only solvable by thinking these ideas as boundary concepts the thought of which is necessary for the unity, respectively, of finite being and finite understanding. By reconstructing the role of death in Schelling’s internal critique of German idealism, then, my thesis also brings into closer contact Kant’s transcendental and Heidegger’s existential projects.

Keywords: Kant
Schelling
Fichte
Heidegger
immortalism
mortalism
intellectual intuition
thing in itself
life
death
Advisor: Franks, Paul
Advances in Quantitative Methods in Dinosaur Palaeobiology: A Case Study in Horned Dinosaur Evolution

Discerning modes and rates of biological evolution and speciation are some of the primary objectives of evolutionary biology. Much palaeobiological work has focused on developing robust methods for testing and fitting evolutionary models to samples of fossils across a stratigraphic or temporal axis, with most analyses centering on marine invertebrates. Recent extensive sampling of dinosaur deposits now allows for testing of evolutionary modes in this clade, a first for large-bodied terrestrial vertebrates. Within dinosaur palaeobiology, the relative roles of anagenesis and cladogenesis in diversification, particularly for horned dinosaurs, are hotly debated. Due to their large sample sizes, well-documented stratigraphic positions, highly diagnostic ornamentation, and monodominant bonebeds (representing populations), centrosaurine dinosaurs from the Belly River Group of Alberta make an ideal model system for testing the predictions of these two divergent evolutionary modes. Despite this unparalleled fossil record, it (as well as most fossil records) is limited by missing data, small sample size, taphonomic biases, and stratigraphic error. In this thesis, I present case studies that attempt to quantify and better understand these limitations, and inform best practices for overcoming them. The first four chapters, utilizing data sets for crocodilians (extant archosaurs) and a model geological system (upper Belly River Group), allow for a better-constrained quantitative evolutionary analysis of the Belly River Group centrosaurines in chapter five. Correlations and time-series analyses of morphology and stratigraphic position of Centrosaurus apertus and Styracosaurus albertensis are used to test for directional trends and evolutionary model fitting. Evolutionary results are robust to multiple simulations of stratigraphic uncertainty, and overlap between the taxa depends on a single locality. Results find no support for anagenesis, and rather are consistent with taxonomic turnover due to punctuated evolutionary events or, more likely, ecological replacement due to habitat tracking.

Keywords: Palaeoecology
Palaeobiology
Evolution
Taphonomy
Dinosaur
Centrosaurinae
Ornithischia
Morphology
Allometry
Body Mass
Missing Data
Ornamentation
Paleoecology
Paleontology
Paleobiology
Palaeontology
Canada
Cretaceous
Alberta
Campanian
Preservation
Crocodylia
Geology
Stratigraphy
Fluvial
Morphometrics
Multivariate
Horn
Anagenesis
Cladogenesis
Stasis
Mesozoic
Advisor: Evans, David
Reisz, Robert
The Role of Mitochondrial DNA Replication Fidelity in Toxicity Initiated by Drugs that Impair Mitochondrial Function

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is crucial for proper mitochondrial function in part because it encodes for 13 subunits of the electron transport chain (ETC). mtDNA is replicated exclusively by DNA polymerase gamma (Polg), which has an exonuclease proof-reading domain critical for maintaining mtDNA replication fidelity. Drug-induced mitochondrial toxicity is a common problem that can occur by many mechanisms, including ETC inhibition and mtDNA damage. Gene-environment interactions can modulate mitochondrial toxicity, and individuals with POLG mutations are at risk for toxicity from valproic acid, a drug that impairs mitochondrial function. We hypothesize that mtDNA replication fidelity protects against toxicity initiated by drugs that impair mitochondrial function. I observed that mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) with impaired polymerase gamma exonuclease activity (Polgm/m) and increased mtDNA mutation load have increased susceptibility to toxicity caused by drugs that impair mitochondrial function. The ETC complex I inhibitor rotenone caused increased apoptosis in Polgm/m MEFs relative to wild type. This sensitivity was also observed for other ETC complex inhibitors and clinical drugs with off-target ETC complex I inhibition. A mitochondria-penetrating peptide (MPP) was used to target the alkylating agent chlorambucil (Cbl) specifically to mitochondria. Mitochondria-targeted Cbl (mt-Cbl) caused bioenergetic differences between Polgm/m and wild type MEFs, but was not differentially toxic at the level of cell viability. Increasing mitochondrial autophagy with rapamycin attenuated rotenone toxicity in Polgm/m MEFs, while changes to mitochondrial fusion/fission dynamics did not alter toxicity. Overall, these data suggest that mtDNA replication fidelity maintained by polymerase gamma exonuclease activity protects against bioenergetic stress caused by ETC inhibition.

Keywords: Mitochondria
Toxicity
DNA
Advisor: Laposa, Rebecca
Riddick, David
Communist Upbringing under Stalin: The Political Socialization and Militarization of Soviet Youth, 1934-1941

In 1935 the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) embraced a policy called "communist upbringing" that changed the purpose of Soviet official youth culture. Founded in 1918, the Komsomol had been an organization of cultural proletarianization and economic mobilization. After the turmoil of Stalin’s revolution from above, Soviet leaders declared that the country had entered the period of socialism. Under the new conditions of socialism, including the threat of war with the capitalist world, "communist upbringing" transformed the youth league into an organization of mass socialization meant to mold youth in the shape of the regime. The key goals of "communist upbringing" were to broaden the influence of Soviet political culture and to enforce a code of "cultured" behavior among youth. Youth leaders transformed the Komsomol from a league of young male workers into an organization that included more than a quarter of Soviet youth by 1941, incorporating more adolescents, women, and non-workers. Employing recreation, reward and disciplinary practices that blurred into repression, mass socialization in the Komsomol attempted to create a cohort of "Soviet" youth - sober, orderly, physically strong and politically loyal to Stalin’s regime. The transformation of youth culture under Stalin reflected a general shift in Stalinist social policies in the mid-1930s. Historians have argued whether this turn was a conservative retreat from Bolshevik ideals or the use of apolitical modern state practices in the service of socialism. This dissertation shows that while youth leaders were intensely interested in modern state practices, they made these practices into central elements of Soviet socialism. Through the Komsomol, youth became a resource for the state to guide along the uncertain and dangerous road to the future of communism. Reacting to domestic and international crises, Stalinist leaders created a system of state socialization for youth that would last until the fall of the Soviet Union.

Keywords: Youth
Komsomol
Advisor: Viola, Lynne
Doubt, Faith, and the World to Come in Peter of Cornwall's Book of Revelations

This dissertation explores the relationship between doubt and faith as it appears in a large collection of visions and revelations from the turn of the thirteenth century, entitled the Liber revelationum, or the Book of Revelations. The Liber revelationum was compiled in London by an Augustinian canon named Peter of Cornwall around the year 1200. He collected scores of visions and revelations from books, friends, and acquaintances in order to prove that angels, God, and the human soul existed. My work focuses on the first book of the collection dealing with proofs for life after death. This study explores the context of this manuscript both in Peter’s works and also in the larger twelfth-century literary genres in which it participates. I interrogate the various means by which the spiritual world is revealed to the living. I question what exactly about the spiritual world is revealed, and what specific doubts these revelations address. Finally, I explore the culture of desire for contact with the spiritual world at the turn of the thirteenth century that is glimpsed through Peter’s collection and its immediate sources. Peter’s work results from what he took as a central epistemological problem facing human beings: as a result of sin, humanity has lost the ability to directly know God. As a result, it is natural to doubt His existence as He cannot be known through experience. Peter’s revelations address this doubt. I analyze the ways in which visions and revelations in their response to these doubts run up against recurrent restrictions and frustrations due to the very epistemological limitations that inspire them. These very shortcomings played a role in the process of faith to the religious culture around visions and the desire for them around the year 1200. This faith, which also required a similar separation from the divinity, exists in the same space as visionary and revelatory experience, defined by humanity’s limited ways of knowing and desire for a seemingly infinitely deferred transcendence. I argue that experiential medieval religion and belief, as glimpsed in Peter’s collection, requires and is enriched by doubt as well as challenged by it.

Keywords: Belief and Doubt
Visions in Literature
Soul in Literature
Christian Literature, Latin (Medieval)
Advisor: Goering, Joseph
The Epigenesis of Pure Reason: Systematicity in Kant's Critical Philosophy

The Epigenesis of Pure Reason: Systematicity in Kant's Critical Philosophy -- Kant's critical philosophy explicitly aspires to be systematic. Whether it achieves this aspiration is another question. Comparing pure reason to an organized body, Kant requires a critique of pure reason to be entirely complete down to the least elements, and regards this completeness or systematicity as a matter of all or nothing. He even speaks of critique as a system of the epigenesis of pure reason, i.e., an organic whole or system of possible ends that pure reason generates and organizes entirely out of itself. Nonetheless, the epigenetic model of systematicity, which underlies critical philosophy, remains buried in Kant's corpus. Neither Kant nor any interpreter of critical philosophy makes clear why and how pure reason generates and organizes itself as a self-standing operating system or whole of possible ends. They also do not explicate what this epigenetic conception of systematicity entails for the functioning of theoretical reason, practical reason, and the power of judgement. This dissertation investigates the question of the systematicity of pure reason in Kant's critical philosophy, presenting an epigenetic interpretation of Critique of Pure Reason through the lens of the transcendental doctrine of method. It argues that, in its primary sense, a critique of pure reason is the methodological epigenesis, i.e., self-generation and self-organization, of pure reason as an organic system or embryonic whole of possible ends. The dissertation proceeds by discussing: 1) what motivates pure reason to generate itself as a system or whole of possible ends; 2) how pure reason generates itself as a whole of possible ends; 3) how pure reason structures this whole into organic parts; and 4) how pure reason's self-generation and self-organization make the table of judgements transcendentally systematic.

Keywords: Kant, critique, systematicity, epigenesis
Advisor: Franks, Paul
Escritura en movimiento, movimientos de escritura: narrativas de la vanguardia historica latinoamericana y el auge del cine mudo internacional

Escritura en movimiento, movimientos de escritura: narrativas de la vanguardia historica latinoamericana y el auge del cine mudo internacional da cuenta del grado con el que el cine mudo internacional de los anos veinte determino el trabajo original de la vanguardia historica en America Latina. Exploramos, bajo una perspectiva taxonomica deleuziana, la influencia que tuvieron las cuatro grandes industrias filmicas internacionales de principios del siglo veinte (Hollywood, montaje sovietico, Impresionismo frances y Expresionismo aleman) en la formacion de paradigmas narrativos en cuatro latitudes de la America hispanica: amautistas peruanos, Contemporáneos en Mexico, minorismo cubano y creacionismo huidobriano. Deseamos responder a la pregunta sobre la diferencia esencial de producir escritura despues de la aparicion del cine. Arguimos, en breve, que las propiedades del medio cinematografico modificaron el panorama cultural de Latinoamerica y contribuyeron al replanteamiento de la labor del artista y su obra en la reconstruccion de una identidad.

Keywords: Literature
Latin American
Advisor: Sarabia, Rosa
Decline Industry: The Market Production of Detroit

Declining cities are active sites of capital accumulation. Spaces of decline mark a shift in accumulation strategies rather than a withdrawal of capital. These practices are extended through the deployment of law and policy that privilege private markets and embed market logics in urban governance. The production of urban decline is deepened and extended in the relationship of capital and the state through law and policy. Fundamental to these activities is a conception of private property as the driving force in creating stability and growth within urban areas. The ideological power invested and manifested in private property has driven many of the policy responses to urban decline over the past two decades. The centering of private property as the foundation of urban growth generates policy approaches that appear incapable of addressing the deepening social inequalities of urban life and the uneven development of cities in North America. Declining cities are frequent sites of market-based intervention, yet the outcomes of policies that have entrenched and deepened decline are attributed to the absence or withdrawal of capital rather than the active practices of accumulation. The development and deployment of laws and policies that conceptualize property as merely a stabilizing force, obscures the practices of property, and allow destructive forces of speculative and predatory investment to persist and expand. This work identifies shifting accumulation strategies in spaces of decline. It is a study of activity rather than absence or loss. This allows three interventions in urbanization more broadly and declining cities specifically. First, it integrates declining cities into broader discussions on urbanization and neoliberalization. Second, by exploring declining cities as active sites, the cases both unsettle and expand current understandings of disinvestment, the reach of financialization, and the sites targeted for policy development and transfer. Finally, given the current trajectory of urban austerity, the downloading of crisis to the local level, spaces of decline demonstrate possible trajectories and outcomes as austerity is an already ongoing process in these cities. It also demonstrates how these policies and practice are multi-directional and multi-scalar.

Keywords: Urban
Decline
Property
Advisor: Hackworth, Jason
Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Coparenting Breastfeeding Support Intervention (COSI) on Exclusive Breastfeeding Rates at Twelve Weeks Postpartum

Breastfeeding is the infant feeding method recommended by leading health authorities. Breastfeeding rates in Canada are suboptimal. Fathers’ support for breastfeeding has been found to positively impact breastfeeding exclusivity and duration. Intervention studies have not been conducted to determine the best way to involve fathers and assist them in providing support to breastfeeding mothers. Therefore, a randomized controlled trial was conducted to evaluate the effects of a coparenting breastfeeding support intervention. Coparenting teaches parents to work in partnership towards meeting their jointly determined child health goals. The primary outcome was exclusive breastfeeding at 12 weeks postpartum. The secondary outcomes were breastfeeding duration, breastfeeding support, and coparenting at 6 and 12 weeks as well as paternal infant feeding attitude and breastfeeding self-efficacy at 6 weeks. First-time breastfeeding women (n=214) and the infants’ fathers were recruited on the postpartum unit. Parents were randomized to the usual care groups or the intervention group, which received standard postpartum care, plus a multifaceted support intervention. The intervention included an in-hospital discussion, take-home booklets, video, access to a secure study website, follow-up emails, and a telephone call. All components of the intervention contained extensive information on breastfeeding and coparenting. The results of this study indicated that more mothers in the intervention group were exclusively breastfeeding at 6 (n= 75, 72.1% compared to n=62, 60.8%) and 12 weeks (n=70, 67.3% compared to n=63, 60.0%) and practicing any breastfeeding at 6 weeks (n=102, 98.1% compared to n=94, 92.2%); however, the differences were not significant. There were significantly more mothers in the intervention groups practicing any breastfeeding at 12 weeks (n= 100, 96.2% compared to n= 92, 87.6%, RR 1.10, 95% CI [1.01, 1.19]; x2=5.09, p=0.02). No significant differences were found between the groups in relation to breastfeeding support, the coparenting relationship or paternal infant feeding attitude. However, the intervention group had a significantly greater increase in paternal breastfeeding self-efficacy over the first 6 weeks postpartum (F=4.84, p=0.03). This trial appeared to be feasible in the postpartum period and provides preliminary evidence suggesting this intervention may increase breastfeeding outcomes; however, more research is warranted.

Keywords: Breastfeeding
coparenting
Advisor: Dennis, Cindy-Lee
The Utility of a Subjective Happiness Metric in International Development

While the concept of "Gross National Happiness" was introduced by the King of Bhutan in 1972, debate about the utility of a subjective happiness measure has only recently garnered attention in the broader economic and development literature. This paper will discuss the philosophical and historic origins of happiness as well-being or eudaimonia, the subsequent narrowing of the meaning of happiness to hedonic pleasure, and the dominance of the income proxy for well-being. Difficulties with the measurement of and focus on wealth and income will be discussed as forming the basis for the resurgence of a multi-faceted concept of happiness, before some of the chief arguments against the adoption of a subjective happiness measure are addressed. I will then compare and contrast some prominent frameworks for evaluating well-being and draw conclusions about how a subjective happiness metric should be constructed and used to aid in policy development.

Keywords: Gross National Happiness
Happiness Economics
International Development
Subjective Happiness
Advisor: Trebilcock, Michael J
Duty, Breach and Remedy: A Fiduciary Argument for Government Funding of Aboriginal Health

This thesis argues that there is a fiduciary duty on the Government of Canada to provide extended health benefits to Aboriginal peoples. These benefits are the legal remedy for the Crown's multiple breaches of its fiduciary duty to Aboriginal peoples. The duty is rooted in the status of Aboriginal peoples as original inhabitants of Canada and who never ceded their sovereignty, which included a right to maintain traditional ways of life. The Crown acknowledged this duty in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, whose protective language is evocative of fiduciary obligations. The Crown breached its obligation through sharp practice in the negotiation of and failure to implement treaties, introduction of the Indian Act, and in the establishment of the residential schools system. These acts of omission or commission led to a dispossession of Aboriginal peoples from traditional lands and to the appalling levels of health in Aboriginal communities today.

Keywords: Aboriginal
fiduciary
health
Indian
reconciliation
treaty
Advisor: Sanderson, Douglas
Lemmens, Trudo
Characterization of a Novel Growth Promoting Invertebrate Gene in Central Neurons

Axotomized central neurons of most invertebrate species demonstrate a strong regenerative capacity, and as such may provide valuable molecular insights and new tools to promote neurite growth in mammalian neurons. This thesis characterizes a novel molluscan protein, caltubin, ubiquitously expressed in central neurons of Lymnaea stagnalis and locally synthesized in regenerating neurites. Reduction of caltubin levels by gene silencing inhibits outgrowth and regenerative ability of adult Lymnaea neurons and decreases local tubulin levels in neurites. Expression of caltubin in PC-12 cells and mouse cortical neurons promotes nerve growth factor-induced axonal outgrowth and attenuates axonal retraction after injury. Caltubin binds to tubulin in both Lymnaea and mammalian neurons. In Lymnaea neurons, knockdown of caltubin modulated the calcium dynamics and reduced the whole-cell current conductance of voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) in the soma and growth cones. Co-expression of caltubin in tsA201 cells increased the calcium conductance of CaV2.1 channels, likely by increasing surface expression of the channels. This is the first study illustrating that a xenoprotein can enhance outgrowth and prevent degeneration of injured mammalian neurons through a conserved interaction with tubulin. These results may open up new avenues in molecular repair strategies through the insertion of molecular components of invertebrate regenerative pathways into mammalian neurons.

Keywords: Regeneration
Invertebrate
Lymnaea
Neuron
Calcium
Tubulin
Advisor: Feng, Zhong-Ping