Department of Media, Cognition and Communication

In continuation of the neo-formalist cognitivist tradition of David Bordwell and Lennard Højbjerg and with the application of the bio-evolutionary film theory of Torben Grodal, this thesis examines the varied use of specific cinematic techniques and instruments in action movies.

Using varying examples from movies such as Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Hobbit (2012), The Matrix (1999), To Live and Die in LA (1985), Avatar (2009) and The French Connection (1971) the thesis more specifically tries to find out how the uses and functions of the
continuous style in the film as a whole and the specific style in dialogue and action scenes can affect the viewer's experience of dramatic intensity, realism, tempo, rhythm and narrative.

Finally the thesis also goes into detail examining how style can allow for perceptual and emotional immersion and how the concept of embodied style can influence the viewer's bodily reaction to a certain visual experience.

Central to the fundamental view on the film viewing experience in this thesis is the idea of the active viewer, who himself is assembling the audiovisual output and constructs its meaning based on innate abilities, prior experience and learned behaviour. It is further the opinion
of the author that the understanding of style and its functionality is deeply depending on the understanding of the application of style in layers, the dynamics of the relationship between continuity and fragmentation, as well as the idea that narrative coherence is always a result of the symbiotic relationship between style and plot.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a diagnosis and a resolution to generality problem. I state the generality problem and suggest a distinction between criteria of relevance and what I call a theory of determination. The generality problem may concern either of these. While plausible criteria of relevance would be convenient for the externalist, he does not need them. I discuss various theories of determination, and argue that no existing theory of determination is plausible. This provides a case for the no determination view: there are no facts that determine relevant types. This is the diagnosis of the generality problem. The externalist, however, may embrace the no determination view. This is what provides a resolution to the generality problem.

In his book Knowledge and the State of Nature, Edward Craig proposes a new methodological approach to one of the crucial questions in epistemology, the question what knowledge is, or more precisely the question regarding the nature and the concept of knowledge. 2 We should, urges Craig, start by asking what we have the concept of knowledge for, what the point or purpose of this concept is. Craig thinks that we can answer this question, and that the answer will illuminate the concept of knowledge. The reason we have the concept of knowledge, according to Craig, is that we use it 'to flag approved sources of information'. 3 In part, Craig defends his view about the point of the concept of knowledge by providing a detailed genealogical account of how the concept of knowledge evolved out of a more primitive concept of the good informant, which in turn arose in a state of nature. Moreover, Craig endeavours to show how this throws light on a range of otherwise puzzling features of knowledge and our practice of epistemic appraisals, including perennial issues debated in epistemology, such as scepticism, the Gettier-problem, and the controversy over externalism and internalism.

By going back and forth, sometimes altering the conditions of the contractual circumstances, at others withdrawing our judgments and conforming them to principle, I assume that eventually we shall find a description of the initial situation that both expresses reasonable conditions and yields principles which match our considered judgments duly pruned and adjusted. This state of affairs I refer to as reflective equilibrium. Rawls, A Theory Of Justice, p. 20.

Robert Audi's ethical intuitionism deals effectively with standard epistemological problems facing the intuitionist. This is primarily because the notion of self-evidence employed by Audi commits to very little. Importantly, according to Audi we might understand a self-evident moral proposition and yet not believe it, and we might accept a self-evident proposition because it is self-evident, and yet fail to see that it is self-evident. I argue that these and similar features give rise to certain challenges to Audi's intuitionism. It becomes harder to argue that there are any self-evident propositions at all, or more than just a few such propositions. It is questionable whether all moral propositions that we take an interest in are evidentially connected to self-evident propositions. It is difficult to understand what could guide the sort conceptual revision that is likely to take place in our moral theorising. It is hard to account for the epistemic value of the sort of systematicity usually praised in moral theorising. Finally, it is difficult to see what difference the truth of Audi's ethical intuitionism would make to the way in which we (fail to) handle moral disagreement.

What I call hegemonism holds that a satisfactory moral theory must in a fairly direct way guide action. This, the hegemonist believes, provides a constraint on moral theorising. We should not accept moral theories which cannot in the proper sense guide us.

Man behøver ikke et indgående kendskab til bioetik-diskussionen for at vide, at bioetikere som oftest er skeptiske over for bioteknologi. Bioetik er naesten pr. definition bioskepsis. Det, bioskeptikere er imod, er teknologisk manipulation med naturen. Men det er, som jeg skal forklare nedenfor, et synspunkt, som af forskellige grunde ikke kan siges ligeud. Derfor befinder bioskeptikere sig i en argumentatorisk forlegenhed, når de skal fremføre deres holdning i det offentlige rum. Det er denne forlegenhed, og de strategier, den giver anledning til, der er temaet for det følgende.