Activity, Reflection, Context

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce I. Blum
Keyword(s):  
Software Engineering ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Niels Bohr ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Classical View ◽  
The World ◽  
Physics Model

we are almost halfway through the book and this part on design ecology, and I have yet to talk about design, no less software engineering. Is this some kind of shaggy dog story? The kind in which the hero climbs mountains in search of the meaning of life only to have the wise man tell him it is, “The wet bird flies at night.” I hope not. Here is the basic thesis of the book. Computers offer unprecedented power in creating new tools (equipment), but to achieve their potential we must reconstruct how they are used (i.e., shift the paradigm). The first half of the book concerns the foundations upon which we may reconstruct a new software engineering. In the middle of this century, of course, there would be no question as to what that foundation should be: science. But, as I have been trying to show, science and our institutions are in a period of fundamental change. For example, consider what Prigogine, winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize for chemistry, has to say. . . . The classical ... view of science was to regard the world as an “object,” to try to describe the physical world as if it were being seen from the outside as an object of analysis to which we do not belong... The deterministic laws of physics, which were at one point the only acceptable laws, today seem like gross simplifications, nearly a caricature of evolution. . . . Even in physics, as in sociology, only various possible “scenarios” can be predicted. But it is for this very reason that we are participating in a fascinating adventure in which, in the words of Niels Bohr, we are “both spectators and actors.” (1980, pp. xv, xvii) . . . Thus, in only four decades we have moved from physicalism, which sought to impose a physics model on psychology, to a questioning of the very nature of physics itself. As Holland, a physicist, describes our present situation, “we are in a period of transition between two great world views—the universal machine of the classicists and the new holistic universe whose details we are only beginning to glimpse.

Reexamining visual cognition in human infants: On the necessity of representation

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 1003-1004
Author(s):  
Matthew Schlesinger
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Visual Cognition ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Infant Cognition ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Classical View ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
The World

The sensorimotor account of vision proposed by O'Regan & Noë (O&N) challenges the classical view of visual cognition as a process of mentally representing the world. Many infant cognition researchers would probably disagree. I describe the surprising ability of young infants to represent and reason about the physical world, and ask how this capacity can be explained in non-representational terms. As a first step toward answering this question, I suggest that recent models of embodied cognition may help illustrate a way of escaping the representational trap.

Causality Then and Now

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Karen Harding
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Mechanical Model ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Way

Ate appearances deceiving? Do objects behave the way they do becauseGod wills it? Ate objects impetmanent and do they only exist becausethey ate continuously created by God? According to a1 Ghazlli, theanswers to all of these questions ate yes. Objects that appear to bepermanent are not. Those relationships commonly tefemed to as causalare a result of God’s habits rather than because one event inevitably leadsto another. God creates everything in the universe continuously; if Heceased to create it, it would no longer exist.These ideas seem oddly naive and unscientific to people living in thetwentieth century. They seem at odds with the common conception of thephysical world. Common sense says that the universe is made of tealobjects that persist in time. Furthermore, the behavior of these objects isreasonable, logical, and predictable. The belief that the univetse is understandablevia logic and reason harkens back to Newton’s mechanical viewof the universe and has provided one of the basic underpinnings ofscience for centuries. Although most people believe that the world is accutatelydescribed by this sort of mechanical model, the appropriatenessof such a model has been called into question by recent scientificadvances, and in particular, by quantum theory. This theory implies thatthe physical world is actually very different from what a mechanicalmodel would predit.Quantum theory seeks to explain the nature of physical entities andthe way that they interact. It atose in the early part of the twentieth centuryin response to new scientific data that could not be incorporated successfullyinto the ptevailing mechanical view of the universe. Due largely ...

COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND ITS IMPACT ON DYNAMICS OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS, WITH RESPECT TO INDIA

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-24
Author(s):  
Arun Kumar L.S
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
World Trade Organisation ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Monetary Policies ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The World ◽  
Present Context

International business is essential for the countries to generate Economic growth or to increase in exports and reduce in imports, it encompasses all commercial and economic activities between the nations to promote the ideas, resources, transfer the goods and services, technologies across the national borders. In every country has limited resources therefore a country cannot produce all the goods and services that it requires. The present context of the world, there is imbalance in production and supply factors due to Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in market imbalances (demand and supply). The world economy has been hit hard by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, as on June end more than ten 10 million people around the globe had been affected by this pandemic, India, USA and others are worst hit countries with decrease in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and increase in unemployment rate. It may be useful to also note that prolonged lockdowns will eventually imply production shortfalls, may lead to increase in unemployment; decrease in demand for products, slowly running out stocks. In recent forecast of World Trade Organisation (WTO) indicated a clear fall in world trade between 13 per cent and 32 per cent in 2020, perhaps the highest fall since the Great Depression of 1930s. India and world can overcome the challenges by specific government fiscal and monetary policies, by providing economic relief packages and increase in employment opportunities by digitalisation in all the sectors of the economy to increase in accountability, convenience, and gross production, and investment, job security to casual labours or migrant workers. These factors may change the world present situation to productive or welfare economy. The purpose of the research paper is to explain Economic and Business crisis, due to covid-19 in present situation in India and the world. KEY WORDS: C0VID-19, GDP, ECONOMY and GLOBAL CRISIS.

The Metaphysics of Representation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Robert G. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Representational Content ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Degrees Of Belief ◽  
Public Language ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Final Layer ◽  
The World ◽  
Interactive Relationship ◽  
Compositional Interpretation ◽  
The One

What is representation? How do the more primitive aspects of our world come together to generate it? How do different kinds of representation relate to one another? This book identifies the metaphysical foundations for representational facts. The story told is in three parts. The most primitive layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of sensation/perception and intention/action, which are the two most basic modes in which an individual and the world interact. It is argued that we can understand how this kind of representation can exist in a fundamentally physical world so long as we have an independent, illuminating grip on functions and causation. The second layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of (degrees of) belief and desire, whose representational content goes far beyond the immediate perceptable and manipulable environment. It is argued that the correct belief/desire interpretation of an agent is the one which makes their action-guiding states, given their perceptual evidence, most rational. The final layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of words and sentences, human artefacts with representational content. It is argued that one can give an illuminating account of the conditions under which a compositional interpretation of a public language like English is correct by appeal to patterns emerging from the attitudes conventionally expressed by sentences. The three-layer metaphysics of representation resolves long-standing underdetermination puzzles, predicts and explains patterns in the way that concepts denote, and articulates a delicate interactive relationship between the foundations of language and thought.

Research of Green Concrete

2012 ◽  
Vol 214 ◽  
pp. 353-357
Author(s):  
Shu Zhen Yang
Keyword(s):  
Building Material ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
Green Concrete ◽  
Existing Problems ◽  
The World

Concrete is the most widely used building material in the world, while with the large amount use of concrete, the pollution is becoming more and more serious. While green concrete can overcome ordinary concrete's shortcomings. This paper will introduce green concrete's features and analyze its prospect. What's more, according to the present situation of green concrete, points out some existing problems of green concrete, to these problems, put forward some suggestions to its development.

The (Re)Shaping of the Israeli Sport Media: The Case of Talk-Back

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yair Galily
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
World Wide Web ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Multimedia Content ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Sport Media ◽  
The World ◽  
Web News ◽  
Source Of Information

From its explosive development in the last decade of the 20th century, the World Wide Web has become an ideal medium for dedicated sports fanatics and a useful resource for casual fans, as well. Its accessibility, interactivity, speed, and multimedia content have triggered a fundamental change in the delivery of mediated sports, a change for which no one can yet predict the outcome (Real, 2006). This commentary sheds light on a process in which the talk-back mechanism, which enables readers to comment on Web-published articles, is (re)shaping the sport realm in Israeli media. The study on which this commentary is based involved the comparative analysis of over 3,000 talk-backs from the sports sections of 3 daily Web news sites (Ynet, nrg, and Walla!). The argument is made that talkbacks serve not only as an extension of the journalistic sphere but also as a new source of information and debate.

scholarly journals Designed to deter: Barriers to facilities at secondary schools in Ghana

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony K. Danso ◽  
Frances E. Owusu-Ansah ◽  
Divine Alorwu
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Students With Disabilities ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
International Standards ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Outcome ◽  
Building Standards ◽  
Urgent Action ◽  
Building Elements

Background: There are varied and complex problems associated with the admission of students with disabilities into secondary (senior high) schools all over the world. This situation is further complicated by difficulties encountered in the built environment of these institutions and, in this, Ghana is no exception. Objectives: This exploratory study investigated the level of accessibility of the built environment in secondary schools in eight out of the ten regions of Ghana, in order to determine whether they conform to guidelines provided in international building standards and also assess the extent to which they have been designed and constructed to meet the provisions of the Persons with Disability Act 2006, which allows for equal access to public buildings in Ghana.Method: In total, 705 building elements in 264 facilities were surveyed using international standards, building codes, regulations and guidelines. These facilities included car parks, classrooms, dormitories, assembly halls, telephone booths and administration blocks.Results: Our findings revealed that most of the building elements were barring and not disability-friendly. Just to name a few: there were obstructions on access routes to and around buildings, absence of designated car parks, unfriendly vertical and horizontal means of circulation in buildings and lack of accessible sanitary accommodations. In addition, the general lighting and signage were poor. As a result, very few students with disabilities are admitted and retained in these schools.Conclusion: Mainstreaming of people with disabilities into the Ghanaian educational system remains impossible unless urgent action is taken to alter the facilities at secondary schools. Based on this research outcome, recommendations have been made to the Ghanaian government and the Ghana Education Service, as well as non-governmental organisations and relevant professional bodies for the amelioration of the present situation in our secondary schools.

Utilitarianism and the Meaning of Life

Utilitas ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Metz
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Principled Explanation ◽  
Kantian Theory ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Utilitarian Theory

This article addresses the utilitarian theory of life's meaning according to which a person's existence is significant just in so far as she makes those in the world better off. One aim is to explore the extent to which the utilitarian theory has counter-intuitive implications about which lives count as meaningful. A second aim is to develop a new, broadly Kantian theory of what makes a life meaningful, a theory that retains much of what makes the utilitarian view attractive, while avoiding the most important objections facing it and providing a principled explanation of their force.I have been very much puzzled as to the meaning of the question ‘What is the meaning or purpose of life?’ … But at last it occurred to me that perhaps the vague words of this question are often used to mean no more than ‘What is the use of a man's life?’ … A man's life is of some use, if and only if the intrinsic value of the Universe as a whole (including past, present, and future) is greater, owing to the existence of his actions and experiences, than it would have been if, other things being equal, those actions and experiences had never existed.G. E. Moore

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