The Causal Structure of Conscious Agency

This dissertation presents a new approach to modeling the causal structure of conscious agency, with a foundation in the metaphysics of causation and empirical tools for incorporating scientific results into an enriched causal model of agency. I use an interventionist causal analysis and experimental evidence from cognitive science to demonstrate that conscious awareness plays several significant causal roles in action. I then consider metaphysical challenges to this approach, and demonstrate that higher level causes such as awareness are legitimately causal.I expose the flawed understanding of causation required for inferring the causal inertness of awareness from experimental evidence. This leads to a differentiation between metaphysical causal questions, about the nature of causation itself, from empirical questions, which apply causal analysis to actual systems in the world. I challenge the practice of focusing on the awareness of agency in order to address the causal role of awareness in agency on the grounds that it inappropriately internalizes conscious agency. To demonstrate how we ought to incorporate scientific results into philosophical theories of agency, I offer an empirically enriched view of conscious agency. I rely on an interventionist approach to develop an evidentiary framework to ascertain the extent to which conscious awareness is a causal factor in action. Based on results from automatism research, I demonstrate at least three important ways in which awareness is a major causal contributor to human action: conscious intentions or goals; conscious perceptual information relevant to the goal; and conscious execution. I then address the problematic assumption that 'higher level' causes are derivative from lower level ones. I introduce the notion of counterfactual robustness to show how, for single tokens of causation, microphysical explanations are often explanatorily inferior to macrophysical ones, and distort the explanandum. I allay concerns about my variable choice by showing that we cannot, even in principle, replace higher level variables such as awareness with lower level variables such as neuronal processing. I introduce the notion of causal articulation in complex systems as the means by which higher level causes have lower level effects, while avoiding problems encountered by other theories of downward causation

Becoming Citizen:Spatial and Expressive Acts when Strangers Move In

This article examines the conditions and expressions of how refugees in Denmark become citizens. Through visual and collaborative ethnographic fieldwork, which took place during 2017, the case study follows the everyday life of an Eritrean community living in a former retirement home in the town of Hørsholm. The article investigates how becoming citizen can be understood as mediatised, spatial and expressive negotiations between the refugees and the local society. We look at the conditions of becoming citizen through the local framing of the Eritrean community—understood as political, social, cultural and material framing conditions. We draw on Engin Isin’s concept of performative citizenship (Isin, 2017), and we suggest how everyday life and becoming potentially hold the capacity to re-formulate and add to the understanding of citizenship. We suggest that becoming citizen is not merely about obtaining Danish citizenship and civic rights nor tantamount with settling down. On the contrary, the analysis shows that becoming citizen is a process of expressed and performed desires connected to global becomings beyond the sedentary citizenship, and therefore holds capacity for transforming and diversifying the notion of citizenship

The Reality of Refugee Diplomacy: EU-Turkey agreement and political narratives of legitimization

The EU-Turkey Statement was introduced in March 2016 as a solution to the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, with the aim of limiting irregular migration to Europe and securing the EU’s external borders. As an act of externalization of the European border and migration control, the agreement has been regarded as controversial. This paper attempts to answer how the EU-Turkey Statement has been framed in the political discourse as an attempt to legitimize the externalization of European border and migration management to a ‘safe third country’. The research question will be addressed through document and discourse analysis, and with the analytical lenses of humanitarianization, securitization and externalization of the Statement, its evaluations, and the political discourses surrounding it. In summary, the result of this analysis shows that the EU-Turkey Statement has been framed as a humanitarian and security crisis in order to justify a questionable externalization policy.&nbsp

Reflectance spectroscopy as a remote sensing technique for the identification of porphyry copper deposits.

Thesis. 1978. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Earth and Planetary Science.Microfiche copy available in Archives and Science.Bibliography: leaves 111-114.Ph.D

Making sense: dopamine activates conscious self-monitoring through medial prefrontal cortex

When experiences become meaningful to the self, they are linked to synchronous activity in a paralimbic network of self-awareness and dopaminergic activity. This network includes medial prefrontal and medial parietal/posterior cingulate cortices, where transcranial magnetic stimulation may transiently impair self-awareness. Conversely, we hypothesize that dopaminergic stimulation may improve self-awareness and metacognition (i.e., the ability of the brain to consciously monitor its own cognitive processes). Here, we demonstrate improved noetic (conscious) metacognition by oral administration of 100 mg dopamine in minimal self-awareness. In a separate experiment with extended self-awareness dopamine improved the retrieval accuracy of memories of self-judgment (autonoetic, i.e., explicitly self-conscious) metacognition. Concomitantly, magnetoencephalography (MEG) showed increased amplitudes of oscillations (power) preferentially in the medial prefrontal cortex. Given that electromagnetic activity in this region is instrumental in self-awareness, this explains the specific effect of dopamine on explicit self-awareness and autonoetic metacognition

Eiendom på russisk. Er свой og sin så like som vi tror?

I denne oppgaven ser jeg på hvordan eiendomspronomen brukes på norsk og russisk. Sin på norsk og свой russisk skal i teorien kunne brukes likt i 3.person. Så hvorfor da fikk jeg stadig høre om norske studenter som hadde problemer med å bruke eiendomspronomen rett på russisk? Var dette isolert til kun å gjelde 1.person og 2.person, der refleksivt pronomen ikke kunne brukes på norsk, men kunne brukes på russisk? Eller var det kanskje større forskjell på eiendomspronomen på norsk og russisk enn det som tidligere var blitt avdekket? For å finne ut av dette utførte jeg to undersøkelser: en korpusundersøkelse og en spørreundersøkelse. I korpusundersøkelsen ble russiske litterære tekster sammenlignet med sine norske oversettelser, mens de norske litterære tekstene ble sammenlignet med sine russiske oversettelser. Målet med undersøkelsen var å se om refleksivt pronomen på russisk ble oversatt med refleksivt pronomen på norsk og motsatt. Funnene i undersøkelsen visste at det ikke holdt å se på bruk av refleksivt pronomen og eiendomspronomen: jeg måtte også undersøke hvorfor det ikke ble brukt eiendomspronomen i det hele tatt i stor andel av kontekstene i oversettelser, både med norsk og russisk kildespråk. Jeg kommer til å argumentere for at dette kan knyttes opp mot forskjellige språkstrategier for å markere nærhet på norsk og russisk. Basert på funnene i korpusundersøkelsen ble det foretatt en spørreundersøkelse på norske studenter og russiske morsmålsbrukere. Her analyserer jeg forskjellige tendenser og faktorer fra spørreundersøkelsen og lærebøkene. Denne undersøkelsen ble foretatt på russiske morsmålsbrukere og norske studenter

Unboxing the process of revision between two design-based hybrid learning interventions

The paper investigates the revision process of a Design-Based Research (DBR) project, in which a hybrid continuing professional development (CPD) course for educators from three higher education institutions is developed, tested and redesigned. The course runs over two cycles and is based on a key design principle, which aims at fostering inter-institutional collaboration among participants in relation to developing, testing and evaluating new learning designs in the participants’ respective teaching practices. On the basis of semi-structured interviews with the course participants, it is discussed which aspects of the course should be revised and which design strategy to apply during the revision process. Moreover, the implications for the following intervention are discussed and the redesigned course is presented. The empirical contribution of the paper lies in the detailed unboxing of the steps taken by the research and design team in the revision process between the two cycles of the course. As such, the paper exemplifies data-informed revision processes in which the key design principle of a course is maintained, but the adaptation of it is fundamentally revised though the strategy of branching out, i.e. central aspects of the design are revised to create a new solution