Transformative deliberative moments among ex-combattants in Colombia

This dissertation presents the concept of Deliberative Transformative Moment and the instrument to identify it, in a further attempt to bridge the gap between deliberation theory and practice. A transformative moment in the deliberative process occurs when the level of deliberation is either lifted from low to high or drops from high to low. In order to identify such a moment, one has to look at the context and dynamics of the group discussion. This broadening of the unit of analysis is a big difference from other existing instruments to measure the level of deliberation, such as the Deliberative Quality Index –DQI, which focuses primarily on the individual speech acts. Consistent with the theoretical framework of consociational and deliberation approaches, the observed discussions took place among two deeply divided groups, Colombian ex-combatants from both the extreme left and the extreme right. Moving beyond a pure Habermasian perspective, this study finds that besides pure rational arguments, there are some contexts in which personal stories, jokes and self-interests, acting as justification of arguments, have either a positive or a negative impact on deliberative transformative moments. Although this research has a strongly qualitative orientation, reliability tests scored high, giving it strength as a reliable and valid research method that shedding some light on the sort of speech acts that enhance deliberation and those that detract from it.

Intentionality in Reference and Action

This essay asks whether there is a relation between action-serving and meaning-serving intentions. The idea that the intentions involved in meaning and action are nominally designated alike as intentionalities does not guarantee any special logical or conceptual connections between the intentionality of referential thoughts and thought-expressive speech acts with the intentionality of doing. The latter category is typified by overt physical actions in order to communicate by engaging in speech acts, but also includes at the origin of all artistic and symbolic expression such cerebral and linguistic doings as thinking propositional thoughts. There are exactly four possibilities by which meaning and action intentionalities might be related to be systematically investigated. Meaning-serving and action-serving intentionalities, topologically speaking, might exclude one another, partially overlap with one another, or subsume one in the other or the other in the one. The theoretical separation of the two ostensible categories of intendings is criticized, as is their partial overlap, in light of the proposal that thinking and artistic and symbolic expression are activities that favor the inclusion of paradigm meaning-serving intentions as among a larger domain of action-serving intentions. The only remaining alternative is then developed, of including action-serving intentions reductively in meaning-serving intentions, and is defended as offering in an unexpected way the most cogent universal reductive ontology in which the intentionality of doing generally relates to the specific intentionality of referring in thought to the objects of predications, and of its artistic and symbolic expression.