My dissertation is a critical essay on converse intentionalism as embedded in the contemporary philosophy of experience, which says that for any experience, its intentional content supervenes on its phenomenal character. This principle has been deeply involved in a lot of discussions on the content of experience. For example, contemporary phenomenal-intentionality theorists argue for their position by appealing to scenarios in which a brain-in-a-vat (BIV) which is causally disconnected from the external environment, and which has the same phenomenal states as normal humans do, has the same intentional content as normal humans (Horgan and Tienson 2002, Loar 2003, Pautz 2006a, Chalmers 2004). In their view, this BIV type of thought experiment is intuitively compelling and strongly convinces them of converse intentionalism.

So just as in epistemology where converse intentionalism is often tacitly assumed, it is also widely accepted in the philosophy of experience. As we shall see later, whether you are a naturalist or a non-naturalist, a semantic externalist or a narrow theorist, converse intentionalism is a commitment you have strong reason to make. Ironically, however, as in Greek tragedy where one cannot avoid what one wants to, I will argue that a philosopher of experience, whether she is a naturalist or a non-naturalist, an externalist or a narrow theorist, can never embrace converse intentionalism without undermining her own position. Given that converse intentionalism gives rise to tension within their respective theories, I will propose a replacement for philosophers of experience, and I will argue that this new theory is probably the best they can have.

From the naturalist point of view, every property can be understood in terms of the physical sciences. Typically, philosophers naturalize intentionality by holding semantic externalism of mental content i.e., that the content of a mental state is determined by entities in the environment. Then to naturalize phenomenology, they may argue that phenomenology is identical to experiential intentionality. Since identity entails co-supervenience, we can see why naturalists/externalists endorse converse intentionalism.

Meanwhile, narrow content theorists also endorse converse intentionalism. According to almost all such theorists, a semantic theory assigning a content to a mental state should at least do so in accordance with the psychological role of that state (e.g., Loar 1988a, b). Given the strong connection between phenomenology and psychological role—e.g., pain causes avoidance—narrow theorists argue that content is determined by or identical to phenomenology. This is why converse intentionalism generally accompanies narrow theorists’ core thesis.

However, as Block’s Inverted Earth case (1990) suggests, intentional content as understood by naturalists and externalists is determined by the external environment whereas intuitively, phenomenal character is independent from the external environment. Hence, I will argue in Chapter 2 that we would have an intuition clash if naturalists’ identification of phenomenology and intentionality is accepted. On the other hand, the connection between phenomenology and psychological role as presupposed by the narrow theorist to argue for converse intentionalism is questionable. For as Block’s (1978) argues, the psychological role of a mental state is relational while the phenomenal character of a state is intrinsic, and hence it is possible to fix the psychological role of a state without fixing its phenomenal character. Conversely, Block (2007) also argues that experiences with the same intrinsic properties may not have the same psychological role. Once again, as I will show in Chapter 3, we would have an intuition clash if narrow theorists’ presupposition that they co-supervene on each other is upheld.

This suggests that the crux of the issue is that phenomenal character is internal and intrinsic while psychological role and content are relational. That is why we always have an intuition clash whichever semantic theory is accepted. I suggest we should replace it. To be clear, by replacing converse intentionalism, I aim to find a principle that achieves the following two goals. First, it should address the primary concerns of externalists and narrow theorists. In the former case, the new principle should help externalists naturalize intentionality. In the latter case, it should satisfy narrow theorists’ requirement that content assignments should be in accordance with psychological role. Second, the new principle should avoid all the counter-examples discussed in this dissertation, and should not be subject to new counter-examples.

To replace converse intentionalism, in Chapter 4, I propose a new principle that for any two experience tokens, if they have the same phenomenal character and psychological role, then they have the same content. I shall call it “converse psychointentionalism”. We can sense prima facie this principle is less likely to cause such intuition clashes for us since both the antecedent and the consequent involve relational properties, i.e., the former involves psychological role and the latter involves content. I will further argue at the second half of Chapter 4 that converse psychointentionalism can satisfactorily address the primary concerns of naturalists/non-naturalists and of externalists/narrow theorists.

In sum, we should replace converse intentionalism with converse psychointentionalism. In my view, philosophy of experience has been dominated by converse intentionalism, which generates a lot of puzzles and problems for philosophers whether they are naturalists, non-naturalists, externalists or narrow theorists. If my arguments are correct, it is time for us to jettison converse intentionalism, and replace it with a less problematic principle.

This dissertation examines the historical formation of a Japanese term zōkei from the 1890s to the 1940s. The term zōkei refers to a cooperative relationship of eyes and hands in making forms out of substance. Observing practices informed by zōkei creates a historical condition for looking at “Japanese art” beyond state-defined parameters of fine art. This project examines such beginning moments in “visual practice” alongside modern Japan’s imperial framework in modern Japan. This dissertation examines four episodes of “visual practice” in the context of modern Japan from the 1890s to the 1940s. The first episode introduces the use of vision in the teachings of art anatomy in 1890s Japan. Rather than seeing anatomy from the angle of dissection, I point out the role of pathological observation in the teachings of art anatomy. The contact of vision with the surface of plasters creates a preposition of vision, orienting viewer’s body in the space for looking practices. The second episode details the use of tactile vision in the ethnographical drawings. Descriptively confirming forms of plastic objects, the observing practice of modernologist’s ethnographical drawings diminish the distinction between fine art and folk art, viewing the world as social spaces full of plastic arts. The third episode reviews Bauhaus-informed art classes at elementary schools during the 1930s and design education at the midcentury. Rather than art academicism, the aesthetic education emerging from this context prioritizes the use of vision for sensory experiences, thereby ensuring individual agency. The fourth episode analyzes how observing practices were disrupted during the wartime period, and being consumed by imperial politics as a wartime discourse “visual culture” to build an ideology of Greater-Asia. Throughout the four chapters, this dissertation outlines a framework around the term zōkei to speculate a transition of art-historical writings away from “Japanese art history.” Rather than reenforcing nation-based art-historical writing, or naturalizing vision as an empirical tool for the state’s politics, the project centers on the practice of vision itself and the historical deployments it had that contributes to term to be translated as “visual arts.” In my discussion, “visual art” presents a descriptive mode in orienting the body and plastic objects in a social world. In this context, the artist’s body exists in a multidimensional relationship between vision and plasticity.

This study deals with the historical development of Mandarin minimizers through examining their synchronic distribution. The main source of Mandarin minimizers, a distinct class of negative polarity items (NPIs), is ‘one’-phrases which are composed of the numeral ‘one’, a unit word, and a noun. The development of ‘one’-phrases as minimizers from Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Early Mandarin, to Modern Mandarin makes strong links among important linguistic issues such as NPI licensing, word order, numeral-classifier phrases, and focus constructions.

The diachronic development of the ‘one’-phrases as minimizers is analyzed from a constructional approach. The present study shows that the unit of these diachronic changes is the whole ‘one’-phrase construction instead of merely the lexical items. This constructional approach reflects both compositionality and non-compositionality of Mandarin ‘one’-phrases as minimizers at different stages of development. Each component of the ‘one’-phrases contributes its semantics to the whole construction, while the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relations among the three elements have changed over time. The various functions of the ‘one’-phrases, including as a numeral phrase, a modifier phrase, and a referential phrase, are the result of ‘one’-phrases being associated with extant constructions in Mandarin Chinese, forming a constructional network. The hierarchical network accounts for how ‘one’-phrases have developed their polysemous model.

Results of corpus/text analyses show that, in general, Mandarin minimizers have gradually developed the tendency of appearing in a preverbal object position. However, when Mandarin existential construction is involved, they tend to stay in the postverbal position. I argue that the distribution of minimizers has been shaped by the information structure of VO and OV word orders. The skewed distribution of minimizers in different construals reflects how focus is structured in Mandarin. The Mandarin OV construction has an obligatory preverbal object focus, while the existential construction profiles the postverbal object. When ‘one’-phrases under negation appear in the OV construction, they must be interpreted as minimizers. This combination guarantees a scalar reading, which provides the environment for the additive particle 也 yě and the exhaustive operator 都 dōu to develop their scalar interpretation. It also accounts for why minimizers in the Modern Mandarin OV construction require the accompanying scalar particles.

The requirement of focus-sensitive scalar particles for ‘one’-phrases as minimizers is also observed in other numeral classifier languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Malay. A typological comparison of these languages shows that focus is a crucial condition for licensing ‘one’-phrases as minimizers. Moreover, the ordering of the components of ‘one’-phrases combined with the position of the focus-sensitive particles results in different scopes of focus-imposed minimizers. The difference in scope determines how scalar inferences of the minimizer in question are structured. The inferences from minimizers can be construed by either a type or a quantity contrast. This analysis shows that the scalar particles associated with minimizers in these languages come from the same source, an additive particle, which is associated with alternatives for scalar inferences.

To summarize, the constructional account employed in this study provides a quantitative treatment of how language change originates in language use with particular attention paid to numeral phrases, word order, focus, and negation. The development of ‘one’-phrases as minimizers exemplifies the incremental process of diachronic changes within a construction network. The analysis of ‘one’-phrases as minimizers provides an answer to why they are crosslinguistically recognized as strong NPIs by integrating focal construals, referentiality of numeral phrases, and scalarity.

Energy-efficient switching devices have become ever more important with the emergence of ubiquitous computing. NEM relays are promising to complement CMOS transistors as circuit building blocks for future ultra-low-power information processing, and as such have recently attracted significant attention from the semiconductor industry and researchers. Relay technology potentially can overcome the energy efficiency limit for conventional CMOS technology due to several key characteristics, including zero OFF-state leakage, abrupt switching behavior, and potentially very low active energy consumption. However, two key issues must be addressed for relay technology to reach its full potential: surface oxide formation at the contacting surfaces leading to increased ON-state resistance after switching, and high switching voltages due to strain gradient present within the relay structure.

This dissertation advances NEM relay technology by investigating solutions to both of these pressing issues. Ruthenium, whose native oxide is conductive, is proposed as the contacting material to improve relay ON-state resistance stability. Ruthenium-contact relays are fabricated after overcoming several process integration challenges, and show superior ON-state resistance stability in electrical measurements and extended device lifetime. The relay structural film is optimized via stress matching among all layers within the structure, to provide lower strain gradient (below 10E-3/µm) and hence lower switching voltage. These advancements in relay technology, along with the integration of a metallic interconnect layer, enable complex relay-based circuit demonstration. In addition to the experimental efforts, this dissertation theoretically analyzes the energy efficiency limit of a NEM switch, which is generally believed to be limited by the surface adhesion energy. New compact (<1 µm^2 footprint), low-voltage (<0.1 V) switch designs are proposed to overcome this limit. The results pave a pathway to scaled energy-efficient electronic device technology.