Counter-figures : An Essay on Antimetaphoric Resistance: Paul Celan's Poetry and Poetics at the Limits of Figurality

Titled "An Essay on Antimetaphoric Resistance", the dissertation investigates what is here being called "Counter-figures": a term which has in this context a certain variety of applications. Any other-than-image or other-than-figure, anything that cannot be exhausted by figuration (and that is, more or less, anything at all, except perhaps the reproducible images and figures themselves) can be considered "counter-figurative" with regard to the formation of images and figures, ideas and schemas, "any graven image, or any likeness of any thing". Singularity and radical alterity, as well as temporality and its peculiar mode of uniqueness are key issues here, and an ethical dimension is implied by, or intertwined with, the aesthetic. In terms borrowed from Paul Celan's "Meridian" speech, poetry may "allow the most idiosyncratic quality of the Other, its time, to participate in the dialogue". This connection between singularity, alterity and temporality is one of the reasons why Celan so strongly objects to the application of the traditional concept of metaphor to poetry. As Celan says, "carrying over [übertragen]" by metaphor may imply an unwillingness to "bear with [mittragen]" and to "endure [ertragen]" the poem. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first consists of five distinct prolegomena which all address the mentioned variety of applications of the term "counter-figures", and especially the rejection or critique of either metaphor (by Aristotle, for instance) or the concept of metaphor (defined by Aristotle, and sometimes deemed "anti-poetic" by both theorists and poets). Even if we restrict ourselves to the traditional rhetorico-poetical terms, we may see how, for instance, metonymy can be a counter-figure for metaphor, allegory for symbol, and irony for any single trope or for any piece of discourse at all. The limits of figurality may indeed be located at these points of intersection between different types of tropes or figures, and even between figures or tropes and the "non-figurative trope" or "pseudo-figure" called catachresis. The second part, following on from the open-ended prolegomena, concentrates on Paul Celan's poetry and poetics. According to Celan, true poetry is "essentially anti-metaphoric". I argue that inasmuch as we are willing to pay attention to the "will" of the poetic images themselves (the tropes and metaphors in a poem) to be "carried ad absurdum", as Celan invites us to do, we may find alternative ways of reading poetry and approaching its "secret of the encounter", precisely when the traditional rhetorical instruments, and especially the notion of metaphor, become inapplicable or suspicious — and even where they still seem to impose themselves.

Unrealized expectations of jumps in volatility: An explanation to the low and time-varying predictive power of implied volatility

The low predictive power of implied volatility in forecasting the subsequently realized volatility is a well-documented empirical puzzle. As suggested by e.g. Feinstein (1989), Jackwerth and Rubinstein (1996), and Bates (1997), we test whether unrealized expectations of jumps in volatility could explain this phenomenon. Our findings show that expectations of infrequently occurring jumps in volatility are indeed priced in implied volatility. This has two important consequences. First, implied volatility is actually expected to exceed realized volatility over long periods of time only to be greatly less than realized volatility during infrequently occurring periods of very high volatility. Second, the slope coefficient in the classic forecasting regression of realized volatility on implied volatility is very sensitive to the discrepancy between ex ante expected and ex post realized jump frequencies. If the in-sample frequency of positive volatility jumps is lower than ex ante assessed by the market, the classic regression test tends to reject the hypothesis of informational efficiency even if markets are informationally effective.

Empire, Tourism, Nostalgia: Joseph Brodsky and Travel Writing

Joseph Brodsky, one of the most influential Russian intellectuals of the late Soviet period, was born in Leningrad in 1940, emigrated to the United States in 1972, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, and died in New York City in 1996. Brodsky was one of the leading public figures of Soviet emigration in the Cold War period, and his role as a model for the constructing of Russian cultural identities in the last years of the Soviet Union was, and still is, extremely important. One of Joseph Brodsky’s great contributions to Russian culture of the latter half of the twentieth century is the wide geographical scope of his poetic and prose works. Brodsky was not a travel writer, but he was a traveling writer who wrote a considerable number of poems and essays which relate to his trips and travels in the Soviet empire and outside it. Travel writing offered for Brodsky a discursive space for negotiating his own transculturation, while it also offered him a discursive space for making powerful statements about displacement, culture, history and geography, time and space—all major themes of his poetry. In this study of Joseph Brodsky’s travel writing I focus on his travel texts in poetry and prose, which relate to his post-1972 trips to Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and Venice. Questions of empire, tourism, and nostalgia are foregrounded in one way or another in Brodsky’s travel writing performed in emigration. I explore these concepts through the study of tropes, strategies of identity construction, and the politics of representation. The theoretical premises of my work draw on the literary and cultural criticism which has evolved around the study of travel and travel writing in recent years. These approaches have gained much from the scholarly experience provided by postcolonial critique. Shifting the focus away from the concept of exile, the traditional framework for scholarly discussions of Brodsky’s works, I propose to review Brodsky’s travel poetry and prose as a response not only to his exilic condition but to the postmodern and postcolonial landscape, which initially shaped the writing of these texts. Discussing Brodsky’s travel writing in this context offers previously unexplored perspectives for analyzing the geopolitical, philosophical, and linguistic premises of his poetic imagination. By situating Brodsky’s travel writing in the geopolitical landscape of postcolonial postmodernity, I attempt to show how Brodsky’s engagement with his contemporary cultural practices in the West was incorporated into his Russian-language travel poetry and prose and how this engagement thus contributed to these texts’ status as exceptional and unique literary events within late Soviet Russian cultural practices.

"Four Ways of Writing the City" : St. Petersburg-Leningrad as a Metaphor in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky

The present study discusses the theme of St. Petersburg-Leningrad in Joseph Brodsky's verse works. The chosen approach to the evolving im-age of the city in Brodsky's poetry is through four metaphors: St. Petersburg as "the common place" of the Petersburg Text, St. Petersburg as "Paradise and/or Hell", St. Petersburg as "a Utopian City" and St. Petersburg as "a Void". This examination of the city-image focusses on the aspects of space and time as basic categories underlying the poet's poetic world view. The method used is close reading, with an emphasis on semantical interpretation. The material consists of eighteen poems dating from 1958 to 1994. Apart from investigating the spatio-temporal features, the study focusses on exposing and analysing the allusions in the scrutinised works to other texts from Russian and Western belles lettres. Terminology (introduced by Bakhtin and Yury Lotman, among others) concerning the poetics of space in literature is employed in the present study. Conceptions originating from the paradigm of possible worlds are also used in elucidating the position of fictional and actual chronotopes and heroes in Brodsky's poetry. Brodsky's image of his native city is imbued with intertextual linkings. Through reminiscences of the "Divine Comedy" and Russian modernists, the city is paralleled with Dante's "lost and accursed" Florence, as well as with the lost St. Petersburg of Mandel'shtam and Akhmatova. His city-image is related to the Petersburg myth in Russian literature through their common themes of death and separation as well as through the merging of actual realia with the fictional worlds of the Petersburg Text. In his later poems, when his view of the city is that of an exiled poet, the city begins to lose its actual world referents, turning into a mental realm which is no longer connected to any particular geographical location or historical time. It is placed outside time. The native city as the homeland in its entirety is replaced by another existence created in language.

Talking About Time in Russian and Finnish

In this study I look at what people want to express when they talk about time in Russian and Finnish, and why they use the means they use. The material consists of expressions of time: 1087 from Russian and 1141 from Finnish. They have been collected from dictionaries, usage guides, corpora, and the Internet. An expression means here an idiomatic set of words in a preset form, a collocation or construction. They are studied as lexical entities, without a context, and analysed and categorized according to various features. The theoretical background for the study includes two completely different approaches. Functional Syntax is used in order to find out what general meanings the speaker wishes to convey when talking about time and how these meanings are expressed in specific languages. Conceptual metaphor theory is used for explaining why the expressions are as they are, i.e. what kind of conceptual metaphors (transfers from one conceptual domain to another) they include. The study has resulted in a grammatically glossed list of time expressions in Russian and Finnish, a list of 56 general meanings involved in these time expressions and an account of the means (constructions) that these languages have for expressing the general meanings defined. It also includes an analysis of conceptual metaphors behind the expressions. The general meanings involved turned out to revolve around expressing duration, point in time, period of time, frequency, sequence, passing of time, suitable time and the right time, life as time, limitedness of time, and some other notions having less obvious semantic relations to the others. Conceptual metaphor analysis of the material has shown that time is conceptualized in Russian and Finnish according to the metaphors Time Is Space (Time Is Container, Time Has Direction, Time Is Cycle, and the Time Line Metaphor), Time Is Resource (and its submapping Time Is Substance), Time Is Actor; and some characteristics are added to these conceptualizations with the help of the secondary metaphors Time Is Nature and Time Is Life. The limits between different conceptual metaphors and the connections these metaphors have with one another are looked at with the help of the theory of conceptual integration (the blending theory) and its schemas. The results of the study show that although Russian and Finnish are typologically different, they are very similar both in the needs of expression their speakers have concerning time, and in the conceptualizations behind expressing time. This study introduces both theoretical and methodological novelties in the nature of material used, in developing empirical methodology for conceptual metaphor studies, in the exactness of defining the limits of different conceptual metaphors, and in seeking unity among the different facets of time. Keywords: time, metaphor, time expression, idiom, conceptual metaphor theory, functional syntax, blending theory

Words as Events : Cretan Mantinádes in Performance and Composition

Words as Events introduces the tradition of short, communicative rhyming couplets, the mantinádes, which are still sung and recited in a variety of performance situations on the island of Crete. The local focus on communicative economy and artistry is further examined in an in-depth analysis of the processes and ideals of composition. Short genres of oral poetry have been widely neglected in folklore research; however, their demand for structural and semantic coherence as well as their dialogic nature appeals to very different human needs from those of the longer poems. In contemporary Crete, poems also appear in written contexts, they are submitted to modern mass media, and people widely exchange them as text messages. By striving to understand the tradition during a period of change, this study analyzes the larger principles that ground the communication, self-expression and creativity in the genre. The aim of this research is thus twofold: to present this specific register of dialogic oral poetry as well as to create a theoretical approach sensitive to the creativity of such short registers. The study is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Crete between the years 1997 2009. An important aspect of the methodology was to create long-term ties with a number of key-informants who composed mantinádes. The interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological basis for this analysis is in the contemporary Finnish and international research on oral poetry and on anthropological research on communicative speech genres. These theoretical insights are extended by addressing questions of spontaneity and individual agency. Since mantinádes are at the same time a model for composition and a reserve of poems in fixed form, the aesthetics and objectives of performance and composition are also plural. In a traditional singing event, the basic motivation for the singers is to provide a meaningful contribution to a selected theme, which is the shared topic of the poetic dialogue. Consequently, similar topics giving rise to poetic associations can be encountered during various moments of everyday life: the dialogic nature is embodied in the tradition to such degree that it also arises in the performances and composition of single poems and outside of any institutionalized performance arenas. Therefore, as this study discusses in detail, even the apparently non-contextualized poems recited between locals or occurring in the contemporary mass media arenas, are understood and evaluated as utterances that provide an individual perspective within a certain dialogue.

Time and Location as Customer Perceived Value Drivers

Since the emergence of service marketing, the focus of service research has evolved. Currently the focus of research is shifting towards value co-created by the customer. Consequently, value creation is increasingly less fixed to a specific time or location controlled by the service provider. However, present service management models, although acknowledging customer participation and accessibility, have not considered the role of the empowered customer who may perform the service at various locations and time frames. The present study expands this scope and provides a framework for exploring customer perceived value from a temporal and spatial perspective. The framework is used to understand and analyse customer perceived value and to explore customer value profiles. It is proposed that customer perceived value can be conceptualised as a function of technical, functional, temporal and spatial value dimensions. These dimensions are suggested to have value-increasing and value-decreasing facets. This conceptualisation is empirically explored in an online banking context and it is shown that time and location are more important value dimensions relative to the technical and functional dimensions. The findings demonstrate that time and location are important not only in terms of having the possibility to choose when and where the service is performed. Customers also value an efficient and optimised use of time and a private and customised service location. The study demonstrates that time and location are not external elements that form the service context, but service value dimensions, in addition to the technical and functional dimensions. This thesis contributes to existing service management research through its framework for understanding temporal and spatial dimensions of perceived value. Practical implications of the study are that time and location need to be considered as service design elements in order to differentiate the service from other services and create additional value for customers. Also, because of increased customer control and the importance of time and location, it is increasingly relevant for service providers to provide a facilitating arena for customers to create value, rather than trying to control the value creation process. Kristina Heinonen is associated with CERS, the Center for Relationship Marketing and Service Management at the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration

Roles of forced nicotine exposure and Comt gene disruption in the development of addiction-related behavioural and neurochemical changes in mice

Activation of midbrain dopamine systems is thought to be critically involved in the addictive properties of abused substances. Drugs of abuse increase dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens and dorsal striatum, which are the target areas of mesolimbic and nigrostriatal dopamine pathways, respectively. Dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens is thought to mediate the attribution of incentive salience to rewards, and dorsal striatal dopamine release is involved in habit formation. In addition, changes in the function of prefrontal cortex (PFC), the target area of mesocortical dopamine pathway, may skew information processing and memory formation such that the addict pays an abnormal amount of attention to drug-related cues. In this study, we wanted to explore how long-term forced oral nicotine exposure or the lack of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), one of the dopamine metabolizing enzymes, would affect the functioning of these pathways. We also wanted to find out how the forced nicotine exposure or the lack of COMT would affect the consumption of nicotine, alcohol, or cocaine. First, we studied the effect of forced chronic nicotine exposure on the sensitivity of dopamine D2-like autoreceptors in microdialysis and locomotor activity experiments. We found that the sensitivity of these receptors was unchanged after forced oral nicotine exposure, although an increase in the sensitivity was observed in mice treated with intermittent nicotine injections twice daily for 10 days. Thus, the effect of nicotine treatment on dopamine autoreceptor sensitivity depends on the route, frequency, and time course of drug administration. Second, we investigated whether the forced oral nicotine exposure would affect the reinforcing properties of nicotine injections. The chronic nicotine exposure did not significantly affect the development of conditioned place preference to nicotine. In the intravenous self-administration paradigm, however, the nicotine-exposed animals self-administered nicotine at a lower unit dose than the control animals, indicating that their sensitivity to the reinforcing effects of nicotine was enhanced. Next, we wanted to study whether the Comt gene knock-out animals would be a suitable model to study alcohol and cocaine consumption or addiction. Although previous work had shown male Comt knock-out mice to be less sensitive to the locomotor-activating effects of cocaine, the present study found that the lack of COMT did not affect the consumption of cocaine solutions or the development of cocaine-induced place preference. However, the present work did find that male Comt knock-out mice, but not female knock-out mice, consumed ethanol more avidly than their wild-type littermates. This finding suggests that COMT may be one of the factors, albeit not a primary one, contributing to the risk of alcoholism. Last, we explored the effect of COMT deficiency on dorsal striatal, accumbal, and prefrontal cortical dopamine metabolism under no-net-flux conditions and under levodopa load in freely-moving mice. The lack of COMT did not affect the extracellular dopamine concentrations under baseline conditions in any of the brain areas studied. In the prefrontal cortex, the dopamine levels remained high for a prolonged time after levodopa treatment in male, but not female, Comt knock-out mice. COMT deficiency induced accumulation of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid, which increased further under levodopa load. Homovanillic acid was not detectable in Comt knock-out animals either under baseline conditions or after levodopa treatment. Taken together, the present results show that although forced chronic oral nicotine exposure affects the reinforcing properties of self-administered nicotine, it is not an addiction model itself. COMT seems to play a minor role in dopamine metabolism and in the development of addiction under baseline conditions, indicating that dopamine function in the brain is well-protected from perturbation. However, the role of COMT becomes more important when the dopaminergic system is challenged, such as by pharmacological manipulation.

Towards real-time understanding of processes in pharmaceutical powder technology

There is a need for better understanding of the processes and new ideas to develop traditional pharmaceutical powder manufacturing procedures. Process analytical technology (PAT) has been developed to improve understanding of the processes and establish methods to monitor and control processes. The interest is in maintaining and even improving the whole manufacturing process and the final products at real-time. Process understanding can be a foundation for innovation and continuous improvement in pharmaceutical development and manufacturing. New methods are craved for to increase the quality and safety of the final products faster and more efficiently than ever before. The real-time process monitoring demands tools, which enable fast and noninvasive measurements with sufficient accuracy. Traditional quality control methods have been laborious and time consuming and they are performed off line i.e. the analysis has been removed from process area. Vibrational spectroscopic methods are responding this challenge and their utilisation have increased a lot during the past few years. In addition, other methods such as colour analysis can be utilised in noninvasive real-time process monitoring. In this study three pharmaceutical processes were investigated: drying, mixing and tabletting. In addition tablet properties were evaluated. Real-time monitoring was performed with NIR and Raman spectroscopies, colour analysis, particle size analysis and compression data during tabletting was evaluated using mathematical modelling. These methods were suitable for real-time monitoring of pharmaceutical unit operations and increase the knowledge of the critical parameters in the processes and the phenomena occurring during operations. They can improve our process understanding and therefore, finally, enhance the quality of final products.

Reading the Texture of Reality : Chaos Theory, Literature and the Humanist Perspective

Tutkimuksessa analysoidaan kaaosteorian vaikutusta kaunokirjallisuudessa ja kirjallisuudentutkimuksessa ja esitetään, että kaaosteorian roolia kirjallisuuden kentällä voidaan parhaiten ymmärtää sen avaamien käsitteiden kautta. Suoran soveltamisen sijaan kaaosteorian avulla on käyty uudenlaisia keskusteluja vanhoista aiheista ja luonnontieteestä ammennetut käsitteet ovat johtaneet aiemmin tukkeutuneiden argumenttien avaamiseen uudesta näkökulmasta käsin. Väitöskirjassa keskitytään kolmeen osa-alueeseen: kaunokirjallisen teoksen rakenteen teoretisointiin, ihmisen (erityisesti tekijän) identiteetin hahmottamiseen ja kuvailemiseen sekä fiktion ja todellisuuden suhteen pohdintaan. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on osoittaa, kuinka kaaosteorian kautta näitä aiheita on lähestytty niin kirjallisuustieteessä kuin kaunokirjallisissa teoksissakin. Väitöskirjan keskiössä ovat romaanikirjailija John Barthin, dramatisti Tom Stoppardin ja runoilija Jorie Grahamin teosten analyysit. Nämä kirjailijat ammentavat kaaosteoriasta keinoja käsitteellistää rakenteita, jotka ovat yhtä aikaa dynaamisia prosesseja ja hahmotettavia muotoja. Kaunokirjallisina teemoina nousevat esiin myös ihmisen paradoksaalisesti tunnistettava ja aina muuttuva identiteetti sekä lopullista haltuunottoa pakeneva, mutta silti kiehtova ja tavoiteltava todellisuus. Näiden kirjailijoiden teosten analyysin sekä teoreettisen keskustelun kautta väitöskirjassa tuodaan esiin aiemmassa tutkimuksessa varjoon jäänyt, koherenssia, ymmärrettävyyttä ja realismia painottava humanistinen näkökulma kaaosteorian merkityksestä kirjallisuudessa.

Rhetoric and Representation : Exploring the Cultural Meaning of the Natural Sciences in Contemporary Popular Science Writing and Literature

Kirjallisuuden- ja kulttuurintutkimus on viimeisten kolmen vuosikymmenen aikana tullut yhä enenevässä määrin tietoiseksi tieteen ja taiteen suhteen monimutkaisesta luonteesta. Nykyään näiden kahden kulttuurin tutkimus muodostaa oman kenttänsä, jolla niiden suhdetta tarkastellaan ennen kaikkea dynaamisena vuorovaikutuksena, joka heijastaa kulttuurimme kieltä, arvoja ja ideologisia sisältöjä. Toisin kuin aiemmat näkemykset, jotka pitävät tiedettä ja taidetta toisilleen enemmän tai vähemmän vastakkaisina pyrkimyksinä, nykytutkimus lähtee oletuksesta, jonka mukaan ne ovat kulttuurillisesti rakentuneita diskursseja, jotka kohtaavat usein samankaltaisia todellisuuden mallintamiseen liittyviä ongelmia, vaikka niiden käyttämät metodit eroavatkin toisistaan. Väitöskirjani keskittyy yllä mainitun suhteen osa-alueista popularisoidun tietokirjallisuuden (muun muassa Paul Davies, James Gleick ja Richard Dawkins) käyttämän kielen ja luonnontieteistä ideoita ammentavan kaunokirjallisuuden (muun muassa Jeanette Winterson, Tom Stoppard ja Richard Powers) hyödyntämien keinojen tarkasteluun nojautuen yli 30 teoksen kattavaa aineistoa koskevaan tyylin ja teemojen tekstianalyysiin. Populaarin tietokirjallisuuden osalta tarkoituksenani on osoittaa, että sen käyttämä kieli rakentuu huomattavassa määrin sellaisille rakenteille, jotka tarjoavat mahdollisuuden esittää todellisuutta koskevia argumentteja mahdollisimman vakuuttavalla tavalla. Tässä tehtävässä monilla klassisen retoriikan määrittelemillä kuvioilla on tärkeä rooli, koska ne auttavat liittämään sanotun sisällön ja muodon tiukasti toisiinsa: retoristen kuvioiden käyttö ei näin ollen edusta pelkkää tyylikeinoa, vaan se myös usein kiteyttää argumenttien taustalla olevat tieteenfilosofiset olettamukset ja auttaa vakiinnuttamaan argumentoinnin logiikan. Koska monet aikaisemmin ilmestyneistä tutkimuksista ovat keskittyneet pelkästään metaforan rooliin tieteellisissä argumenteissa, tämä väitöskirja pyrkii laajentamaan tutkimuskenttää analysoimalla myös toisenlaisten kuvioiden käyttöä. Osoitan myös, että retoristen kuvioiden käyttö muodostaa yhtymäkohdan tieteellisiä ideoita hyödyntävään kaunokirjallisuuteen. Siinä missä popularisoitu tiede käyttää retoriikkaa vahvistaakseen sekä argumentatiivisia että kaunokirjallisia ominaisuuksiaan, kuvaa tällainen sanataide tiedettä tavoilla, jotka usein heijastelevat tietokirjallisuuden kielellisiä rakenteita. Toisaalta on myös mahdollista nähdä, miten kaunokirjallisuuden keinot heijastuvat popularisoidun tieteen kerrontatapoihin ja kieleen todistaen kahden kulttuurin dynaamisesta vuorovaikutuksesta. Nykyaikaisen populaaritieteen retoristen elementtien ja kaunokirjallisuuden keinojen vertailu näyttää lisäksi, kuinka tiede ja taide osallistuvat keskusteluun kulttuurimme tiettyjen peruskäsitteiden kuten identiteetin, tiedon ja ajan merkityksestä. Tällä tavoin on mahdollista nähdä, että molemmat ovat perustavanlaatuisia osia merkityksenantoprosessissa, jonka kautta niin tieteelliset ideat kuin ihmiselämän suuret kysymyksetkin saavat kulttuurillisesti rakentuneen merkityksensä.

Logic as the Universal Science : Bertrand Russell's Early Conception of Logic and Its Philosophical Context

Bertrand Russell (1872 1970) introduced the English-speaking philosophical world to modern, mathematical logic and foundational study of mathematics. The present study concerns the conception of logic that underlies his early logicist philosophy of mathematics, formulated in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). In 1967, Jean van Heijenoort published a paper, Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus, in which he argued that the early development of modern logic (roughly the period 1879 1930) can be understood, when considered in the light of a distinction between two essentially different perspectives on logic. According to the view of logic as language, logic constitutes the general framework for all rational discourse, or meaningful use of language, whereas the conception of logic as calculus regards logic more as a symbolism which is subject to reinterpretation. The calculus-view paves the way for systematic metatheory, where logic itself becomes a subject of mathematical study (model-theory). Several scholars have interpreted Russell s views on logic with the help of the interpretative tool introduced by van Heijenoort,. They have commonly argued that Russell s is a clear-cut case of the view of logic as language. In the present study a detailed reconstruction of the view and its implications is provided, and it is argued that the interpretation is seriously misleading as to what he really thought about logic. I argue that Russell s conception is best understood by setting it in its proper philosophical context. This is constituted by Immanuel Kant s theory of mathematics. Kant had argued that purely conceptual thought basically, the logical forms recognised in Aristotelian logic cannot capture the content of mathematical judgments and reasonings. Mathematical cognition is not grounded in logic but in space and time as the pure forms of intuition. As against this view, Russell argued that once logic is developed into a proper tool which can be applied to mathematical theories, Kant s views turn out to be completely wrong. In the present work the view is defended that Russell s logicist philosophy of mathematics, or the view that mathematics is really only logic, is based on what I term the Bolzanian account of logic . According to this conception, (i) the distinction between form and content is not explanatory in logic; (ii) the propositions of logic have genuine content; (iii) this content is conferred upon them by special entities, logical constants . The Bolzanian account, it is argued, is both historically important and throws genuine light on Russell s conception of logic.

Complicated Presence : The Unity of Being in Parmenides and Heidegger

The attempt to refer meaningful reality as a whole to a unifying ultimate principle - the quest for the unity of Being - was one of the basic tendencies of Western philosophy from its beginnings in ancient Greece up to Hegel's absolute idealism. However, the different trends of contemporary philosophy tend to regard such a speculative metaphysical quest for unity as obsolete. This study addresses this contemporary situation on the basis of the work of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Its methodological framework is Heidegger's phenomenological and hermeneutical approach to the history of philosophy. It seeks to understand, in terms of the metaphysical quest for unity, Heidegger's contrast between the first (Greek) beginning or "onset" (Anfang) of philosophy and another onset of thinking. This other onset is a possibility inherent in the contemporary situation in which, according to Heidegger, the metaphysical tradition has developed to its utmost limits and thereby come to an end. Part I is a detailed interpretation of the surviving fragments of the Poem of Parmenides of Elea (fl. c. 500 BC), an outstanding representative of the first philosophical beginning in Heidegger's sense. It is argued that the Poem is not a simple denial of apparent plurality and difference ("mortal acceptances," doxai) in favor of an extreme monism. Parmenides' point is rather to show in what sense the different instances of Being can be reduced to an absolute level of truth or evidence (aletheia), which is the unity of Being as such (to eon). What in prephilosophical human experience is accepted as being is referred to the source of its acceptability: intelligibility as such, the simple and undifferentiated presence to thinking that ultimately excludes unpresence and otherness. Part II interprets selected key texts from different stages in Heidegger's thinking in terms of the unity of Being. It argues that one aspect of Heidegger's sustained and gradually deepening philosophical quest was to think the unity of Being as singularity, as the instantaneous, context-specific, and differential unity of a temporally meaningful situation. In Being and Time (1927) Heidegger articulates the temporal situatedness of the human awareness of meaningful presence. His later work moves on to study the situational correlation between presence and the human awareness. Heidegger's "postmetaphysical" articulation seeks to show how presence becomes meaningful precisely as situated, in an event of differentiation from a multidimensional context of unpresence. In resigning itself to this irreducibly complicated and singular character of meaningful presence, philosophy also faces its own historically situated finitude. This resignation is an essential feature of Heidegger's "other onset" of thinking.

Young Men s Sexual Behaviour in Finland and Estonia : Opportunities for prevention of sexually transmitted infections

Background: The incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in most EU states has gradually increased and the rate of newly diagnosed HIV cases has doubled since 1999. STIs differ in their clinical features, prognosis and transmission dynamics, though they do share a common factor in their mode of transmission −that is, human behaviour. The evolvement of STI epidemiology involves a joint action of biological, epidemiological and societal factors. Of the more immediate factors, besides timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment, STI incidence is influenced by population patterns of sexual risk behaviour, particularly the number of sexual partners and the frequency of unprotected intercourse. Assessment of sexual behaviour, its sociodemographic determinants and time-trends are important in understanding the distribution and dynamic of STI epidemiology. Additionally, in the light of the basic structural determinants, such as increased level of migration, changes in gender dynamics and impacts from globalization, with its increasing alignment of values and beliefs, can reveal future challenges related to STI epidemiology. STI case surveillance together with surveillance on sexual behaviour can guide the identification of preventive strategies, assess their effectiveness and predict emerging trends. The objective of this study was to provide base line data on sexual risk behaviour, self-reported STIs and their patterns by sociodemographic factors as well as associations of sexual risk behaviour with substance use among young men in Finland and Estonia. In Finland national population based data on adult men s sexual behaviour is limited. The findings are discussed in the context of STI epidemiology as well as their possible implications for public health policies and prevention strategies. Materials and Methods: Data from three different cross-sectional population-based surveys conducted in Finland and Estonia, during 1998 2005, were used. Sexual behaviour- and health-related questions were incorporated in two surveys in Finland; the Health 2000, a large scale general health survey, focussed on young adults, and the Military health behavioural survey on military conscripts participating in the mandatory military training. Through research collaboration with Estonia, similar questions to the Finnish surveys were introduced to the second Estonian HIV/AIDS survey, which was targeted at young adults. All surveys applied mail-returned, anonymous, self-administered questionnaires with multiple choice formatted answers. Results: In Finland, differences in sexual behaviour between young men and women were minor. An age-stratified analysis revealed that the sex-related difference observed in the youngest age group (18 19 years) levelled off in the age group 20 24 and almost disappeared among those aged 25 29. Marital status was the most important sociodemographic correlate for sexual behaviour for both sexes, singles reporting higher numbers of lifetime-partners and condom use. This effect was stronger for women than for men. However, of those who had sex with casual partners, 15% were married or co-habiting, with no difference between male and female respondents. According to the Military health behavioural survey, young men s sexual risk behaviour in Finland did not markedly change over a period of time between 1998 and 2005. Approximately 30−40% of young men had had multiple sex partners (more than five) in their lifetime, over 20% reported having had multiple sex partners (at least three) over the past year and 50% did not use a condom in their last sexual intercourse. Some 10% of men reported accumulation of risk factors, i.e. having had both, multiple sex partners and not used a condom in their last intercourse, over the past year of the survey. When differences and similarities were viewed within Finland and Estonia, a clear sociodemographic patterning of sexual risk behaviour and self-reported STIs was found in Finland, but a somewhat less consistent trend in Estonia. Generally, both, alcohol and drug use were strong correlates for sexual risk behaviour and self-reported STIs in Finland and Estonia, having a greater effect on engagement with multiple sex partners rather than unprotected intercourse or self-reported STIs. In Finland alcohol use, relative to drug use, was a stronger predictor of sexual risk behaviour and self-reported STIs, while in Estonia drug use predicted sexual risk behaviour and self-reported STIs stronger than alcohol use. Conclusions: The study results point to the importance for prevention of sexual risk behaviour, particularly strategies that integrate sexual risk with alcohol and drug use risks. The results point to the need to focus further research on sexual behaviour and STIs among young people; on tracking trends among general population as well as applying in-depth research to identify and learn from vulnerable and high-risk population groups for STIs who are exposed to a combination of risk factors.