How Things Are

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Siderits
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Causal Relation ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
Classical Indian Philosophy ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
The Common

This work is designed to introduce some of the more important fruits of Indian Buddhist metaphysical theorizing to philosophers with little or no prior knowledge of classical Indian philosophy. It is widely known among non-specialists that Buddhists deny the existence of a self. Less widely appreciated among philosophers currently working in metaphysics is the fact that the Indian Buddhist tradition contains a wealth of material on a broad assortment of other issues that have also been foci of recent debate. Indian Buddhist philosophers have argued for a variety of interesting claims about the nature of the causal relation, about persistence, about abstract objects, about the consequences of presentism, about the prospects for a viable ontological emergentism. They engaged in a spirited debate over illusionism in the philosophy of consciousness. Some espoused global anti-realism while others called its coherence into question. And so on. This work is meant to introduce the views of such major Buddhist philosophers as Vasubandhu, Dharmakīrti, and Nāgārjuna on these and other issues. And it presents their arguments and analyses in a manner meant to make them accessible to students of philosophy who lack specialist knowledge of the Indian tradition. Analytic metaphysicians who are interested in moving beyond the common strategy of appealing to the intuitions of “the folk” should find much of interest here.

Contemplative Principles of a Non-dual Praxis: the Unmediated Practices of the Tibetan ‘Heart Essence’ (sNying thig) Tradition

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-240
Author(s):  
Eran Laish
Keyword(s):  
Contemplative Practice ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
The Common

This article focuses on the main contemplative principles of the ‘Heart Essence’ (sNying thig), a Tibetan Buddhist tradition that is characterized by a vision of non-duality and primordial wholeness. Due to this vision, which asserts an original reality that is not divided into perceiving subject and perceived object, the ‘Heart Essence’ advocates a contemplative practice that undermines the usual intuitions of temporality and enclosed selfhood. Hence, unlike the common principles of intentional praxis, such as deliberate concentration and gradual purification, the ‘Heart Essence’ affirms four contemplative principles of non-objectiveness, openness, spontaneity and singleness. As these principles transcend intentionality, temporality, and multiplicity, they are seen to directly disclose the nature of primordial awareness, in which the meanings of knowing and being are radically transformed. Therefore, the article will also consider the role of these non-dual contemplative principles in deeply changing our understanding of being and knowing alike.

1. Sketch of the Recent Progress of Sanskrit Literature

1866 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 90-91
Author(s):  
John Muir
Keyword(s):  
Recent Progress ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Common Origin ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Sanskrit Literature ◽  
The Common

After giving a sketch of the first beginnings of these studies in India, and their further prosecution in Europe, the author adverted to the relations of Sanskrit with the Greek, Latin, and Teutonic languages, and showed how this affinity established the common origin of the nations by which these languages have been spoken. He then proceeded to give an account of Indian literature, commencing with the hymns and other constituent parts of the Vedas, and then proceeding to the principal systems of Indian philosophy, of which he furnished an outline.

scholarly journals KoGuN: Accelerating Deep Reinforcement Learning via Integrating Human Suboptimal Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peng Zhang ◽  
Jianye Hao ◽  
Weixun Wang ◽  
Hongyao Tang ◽  
Yi Ma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Fuzzy Rule ◽  
Policy Network ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Learning Agents ◽  
The Common ◽  
Low Performance

Reinforcement learning agents usually learn from scratch, which requires a large number of interactions with the environment. This is quite different from the learning process of human. When faced with a new task, human naturally have the common sense and use the prior knowledge to derive an initial policy and guide the learning process afterwards. Although the prior knowledge may be not fully applicable to the new task, the learning process is significantly sped up since the initial policy ensures a quick-start of learning and intermediate guidance allows to avoid unnecessary exploration. Taking this inspiration, we propose knowledge guided policy network (KoGuN), a novel framework that combines human prior suboptimal knowledge with reinforcement learning. Our framework consists of a fuzzy rule controller to represent human knowledge and a refine module to finetune suboptimal prior knowledge. The proposed framework is end-to-end and can be combined with existing policy-based reinforcement learning algorithm. We conduct experiments on several control tasks. The empirical results show that our approach, which combines suboptimal human knowledge and RL, achieves significant improvement on learning efficiency of flat RL algorithms, even with very low-performance human prior knowledge.

Reply to D. C. Mirhady: Torture and rhetoric in Athens

1996 ◽  
Vol 116 ◽  
pp. 132-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Thür
Keyword(s):  
Recent Article ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
Strong Point ◽  
Common Precursor ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
The Common

The strong point of D. Mirhady's work (hereafter ‘M.’) lies in his interpretation of the rhetorical handbooks (technai). I agree in general with Part III, though admitting my lack of specialist knowledge in this field. To a large extent Part III confirms my observations on procedural law published in 1977 (Beweisführung, quoted supra n. 4). I approve of the opinion that, despite the use of written rather than oral testimony, the formulas, by which the evidence was used, did not change (M. after n. 62, see my recent article in: Die athenische Demokratie, ed. W. Eder [Stuttgart 1995], p. 329 f.). M. states an appealing hypothesis, that the introduction of written testimony did not so much change the procedure as provide the cause for a new handbook on rhetoric to be written, which he suggests was the common precursor to Aristotle and Anaximenes.

scholarly journals A Scoping Review of Digital Tools to Reduce Sedentary Behavior or Increase Physical Activity in Knowledge Workers

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ida Damen ◽  
Hans Brombacher ◽  
Carine Lallemand ◽  
Rens Brankaert ◽  
Aarnout Brombacher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Sedentary Behavior ◽  
Digital Library ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Physically Active ◽  
Computing Machinery ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
The Common ◽  
Office Environments

Background: There is increasing interest in the role that technology can play in improving the vitality of knowledge workers. A promising and widely adopted strategy to attain this goal is to reduce sedentary behavior (SB) and increase physical activity (PA). In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art SB and PA interventions using technology in the office environment. By scoping the existing landscape, we identified current gaps and underexplored possibilities. We discuss opportunities for future development and research on SB and PA interventions using technology. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in the Association for Computing Machinery digital library, the interdisciplinary library Scopus, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Xplore Digital Library to locate peer-reviewed scientific articles detailing SB and PA technology interventions in office environments between 2009 and 2019. Results: The initial search identified 1130 articles, of which 45 studies were included in the analysis. Our scoping review focused on the technologies supporting the interventions, which were coded using a grounded approach. Conclusion: Our findings showed that current SB and PA interventions using technology provide limited possibilities for physically active ways of working as opposed to the common strategy of prompting breaks. Interventions are also often offered as additional systems or services, rather than integrated into existing office infrastructures. With this work, we have mapped different types of interventions and provide an increased understanding of the opportunities for future multidisciplinary development and research of technologies to address sedentary behavior and physical activity in the office context.

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