A Liminal Artifact of an Uncommon Nature

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subrata Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Turing Machine ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Physical World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Symbol Manipulation ◽  
Physical Machine ◽  
Essential Nature ◽  
Alan Turing ◽  
The One

The story so far has been a narrative about the development of two very contrasting types of computational artifacts. On the one hand, Alan Turing conceived the idea of a purely abstract and formal artifact—the Turing machine—having no physical reality whatsoever, an artifact that belongs to the same realm of symbols and symbol manipulation, as do mathematical objects. On the other hand, the major part of this narrative has been concerned with a material artifact, the computer as a physical machine that, ultimately, must obey the laws of physics—in particular, the laws governing electromagnetism and mechanics. This was as true for Babbage’s machines (which were purely mechanical) as for Hollerith’s tabulator, as true for the electromechanical machines, as for the Harvard Mark I and the Bell Telephone computers, as true for the ABC and the ENIAC, as for the EDSAC and the Manchester Mark I. Beginning with the EDVAC report, and especially manifest in the development of the first operational stored-program computers, was the dawning awareness of a totally new kind of artifact, the likes of which had never been encountered before. Philosophers speak of the ontology of something to mean the essential nature of that thing, what it means to be that thing. The ontology of this new kind of artifact belonged neither to the familiar realm of the physical world nor the equally familiar realm of the abstract world. Rather, it had characteristics that looked toward both the physical and the abstract. Like Janus, the Roman god of gates, it looked in two opposite directions: a two-faced artifact—which, as we will see, served as the interface between the physical and the abstract, between the human and the automaton; a liminal artifact, hovering ontologically between and betwixt the material and the abstract (see Prologue, Section IV ). So uncommon was this breed that even a name for it was slow to be coined. During the Cambridge conference in England in 1949, we find a session devoted to programming and coding.

Combining Forms and Affixoids in Morphology

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dany Amiot ◽  
Edwige Dugas
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Good Criterion ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The One

Word-formation encompasses a wide range of processes, among which we find derivation and compounding, two processes yielding productive patterns which enable the speaker to understand and to coin new lexemes. This article draws a distinction between two types of constituents (suffixes, combining forms, splinters, affixoids, etc.) on the one hand and word-formation processes (derivation, compounding, blending, etc.) on the other hand but also shows that a given constituent can appear in different word-formation processes. First, it describes prototypical derivation and compounding in terms of word-formation processes and of their constituents: Prototypical derivation involves a base lexeme, that is, a free lexical elements belonging to a major part-of-speech category (noun, verb, or adjective) and, very often, an affix (e.g., Fr. laverV ‘to wash’ > lavableA ‘washable’), while prototypical compounding involves two lexemes (e.g., Eng. rainN + fallV > rainfallN). The description of these prototypical phenomena provides a starting point for the description of other types of constituents and word-formation processes. There are indeed at least two phenomena which do not meet this description, namely, combining forms (henceforth CFs) and affixoids, and which therefore pose an interesting challenge to linguistic description, be it synchronic or diachronic. The distinction between combining forms and affixoids is not easy to establish and the definitions are often confusing, but productivity is a good criterion to distinguish them from each other, even if it does not answer all the questions raised by bound forms. In the literature, the notions of CF and affixoid are not unanimously agreed upon, especially that of affixoid. Yet this article stresses that they enable us to highlight, and even conceptualize, the gradual nature of linguistic phenomena, whether from a synchronic or a diachronic point of view.

Aristotelianism, Newtonianism and the Physics of the Layman

Perception ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benny Shanon
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Philosophy Of Nature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

Written and visual surveys were administered in order to assess people's models of the physical world. A comparison was made between scientific theories and the layman's philosophy of nature on the one hand, and between people's conceptions and perceptions on the other hand. The findings suggest that there are discrepancies on both levels: people do not conceive the world as physicists do, and their conceptions are different from their perceptions.

scholarly journals FORMATION OF MENTALITY IN SHAMANISTIC SOCIETIES OF THE NANAI PEOPLE

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-77
Author(s):  
TATIANA D. BULGAKOVA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Goal Setting ◽  
Physical World ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Real ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Cultural Reality

The generalization of the field material collected by the author allowed to identify two groups of interrelated factors that form the mentality of those Nanai people who practice shamanism. There were two principles identified, the goal-setting and detecting the resources required to achieve the desired results. On the one hand, an irrational worldview, the idea of the accessibility of the space of the spiritual world and the characters inhabiting it (spirits), is specific to the mentality of shamanists. On the other hand, the basis of the mentality of shamanists is the priority of the principle of pragmatism (utility), that is, the desire to consider the spiritual invisible reality as a resource available for solving those problems that arise in the real physical world. The mentality formed at the intersection of the principles of irrationality and utility has a significant sociogenetic potential, its effect extends to those aspects of the socio-cultural reality that are outside of the actual shamanic practice...

scholarly journals Gaan na die mier, kyk na sy weë en word wys: Metafoor of paradigma?

2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Buitendag
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Constructive Empiricism ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure

Go to the ant, consider her ways, and be wise. Metaphor or paradigm? This article takes as its point of departure two citations. The one is from Marshall and Zohar’s contention that the wave-particle dualism is more than a metaphor and the other is from Clayton claiming that indeterminacy was not merely a temporary epistemic problem, but reflected an inherent indeterminacy of the physical world itself. What does it mean if it is not a mere way of speaking? The author of this article departs from the premise that the task of systematic theology is the endeavour to understand reality and that this is a collective enterprise together with other sciences as well. A constructive empiricism could indeed lead to an understanding of reality where reality is more than merely idealistically conceived. Truth is therefore to be replaced with a pragmatic, but value-laden concept of understanding or comprehension. This has the effect that both epistemology and ontology have to be revisited and subsequently panentheism too. The argument finds its niche in Old Testament wisdom literature and Proverbs 6:6 forms the lens of reference. The late South African ethologist Eugène Marais’s epic work, The Soul of the Ant, is applied to illustrate such a proposed epistemic community.

scholarly journals Oscar Werner Tiegs, 1897-1956

1957 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 247-255
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Physiological Analysis ◽  
The One ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Intellectual Power ◽  
Insect Group ◽  
Muscular Action

Oscar Werner Tiegs died on 5 November 1956 at the age of 59. He was at the height of his intellectual power, and in him we have lost a great biologist of this generation. His scientific work is not easily summarized, for his interests extended from physiological analysis of nervous and muscular action to studies in classical invertebrate embryology comparable to the very best work of the last century. He repeatedly turned and returned from one field of work to another. But all his work bore the highly individual stamp of the man. It had clarity, insight and thoroughness, which made his memoirs, long though they are, eminently readable. And this quality was combined with a remarkable power of apt and beautiful illustration. It is scarcely ever safe to predict what part of a man’s work will be the most enduring. But in the case of Oscar Tiegs it will surely be the major part he has played in leading us to divide the great phylum of the Arthropoda into two distinct parts; the one comprising the insects, myriapods, and that curious relic Peripatus , the other comprising the Trilobites, the Crustacea and the arachnids. His work did not simply make one more phylogenetic division in our animal classification. His long detailed researches have established the strongest body of circumstantial evidence for the close relationship of the members of the Myriapod-Insect group, and have thereby greatly increased our understanding of these animals.

scholarly journals Art. VIII.—Emotional Religion in Islām as affected by Music and Singing. Being a Translation of a Book of the Iḥyā ‘Ulūm ad-Dīn of al-Ghazzālī with Analysis, Annotation, and Appendices.

1901 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan B. Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Essential Nature ◽  
Camp Meeting ◽  
The One ◽  
Thomas Browne

“ Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all Church-Musick. For my own part, not only from my obedience but my particular Genius, I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and Tavern-Musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound contemplation of the First Composer.” This is the confession of Sir Thomas Browne, and in that confession races the farthest apart join. The influence of music on the soul, the emotions it stirs, the fears and hopes it excites, all peoples, all climates, all ages have known. The negro at his camp-meeting, the darwīsh at his dhikr, are here kin with the English scholar and physician. For him it may not have been such a cataleptic ecstasy as befalls the negro or the darwīsh, but the cause was one and the essential nature. All religions have drawn strength and exaltation from this which lies at the root of all religion; it has ever kindled and fed the flame of devotion. The one could picture it to himself as “ a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God” ; the other can but ignorantly feel it working on his heart and soul, and sweeping him far from all the bonds of mind and thought. The unknown opens before him and clothes itself with his fancy.

The Changing Temper of American Philosophy

1972 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 129-137
Author(s):  
C. F. Delaney
Keyword(s):  
Present State ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Third ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
The One ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

When the question of a “new age” is put to a philosopher there are two quite different ways in which he can define the issue and accordingly respond. On the one hand, he might construe his task as that of a clarifier of some general claim about cultural revolutions. From this perspective he would set about the task of analyzing the concept of a cultural revolution in terms of some loose analogue of necessary and sufficient conditions. These criteria having been laid down, he could then make suggestions as to whether or not those conditions obtain which would justify the claim that we are in the midst of such a cultural revolution. On the other hand, he might construe his charge more specifically as that of assessing the present state of his own field to see if something like a shift in perspective is manifest in this narrower domain. In this paper I am going to take the latter tack. I will, first, briefly survey the contemporary scene in philosophy to illustrate the “changing temper” I am to talk about; secondly, locate these phenomena in a broader historical context; and, thirdly, try to get at the reasons underlying the changes on which I am focusing. The major part of the paper will be devoted to the third point.

scholarly journals Plato and Aristotle on the denial of tragedy

1984 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 49-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Halliwell
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Implicit Response

When Plato's and Aristotle's views on poetry are juxtaposed, it is usually for the purpose of contrast. Nowhere does the contrast seem to be so sharp as in the case of tragedy, by which both philosophers, agreeing in this at least, rightly meant Homer'sIliadas well as the plays of the Attic genre specifically given the name. While Plato made tragedy the target of his most fervent attacks on poetry, Aristotle devoted the major part of thePoeticsto a reconsideration of the genre, in a sympathetic attempt, it is normally agreed, to defend it against Plato's strictures, and to restore to it some degree of valuable independence. The apparently fundamental opposition between the philosophers’ responses to tragedy can be regarded as expressive of divergent presuppositions about the status of poetry as a whole in relation to other components of culture: on the one side, the presupposition of Platonic moralism, by which poetry is subjected to judgement in terms of values, both cognitive and moral, which lie outside itself; and, on the other, of Aristotelian formalism, according to which autonomy can be established for poetry by turning the criteria of poetic excellence into standards internal and intrinsic to poetry's own forms. As Aristotle himself puts the point, in one of thePoetics’ more suggestive pronouncements, ‘correctness in poetry is not the same as correctness in politics or in any other art.’ Here, as often, an implicit response to Plato can be detected.

The Oxford Compendium of Visual Illusions

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Da Vinci ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Color Images ◽  
Visual Illusions ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Full Color ◽  
The One ◽  
The Brain

Visual illusions cut across academic divides and popular interests: on the one hand, illusions provide entertainment as curious tricks of the eye; on the other hand, scientific research related to illusory phenomena has given generations of scientists and artists deep insights into the brain and principles of mind and consciousness. Numerous thinkers (including Aristotle, Descartes, Da Vinci, Escher, Goethe, Galileo, Helmholtz, Maxwell, Newton, and Wittgenstein) have been lured by the apparent simplicity of illusions and the promise that illusory phenomena can elucidate the puzzling relationship between the physical world and perceptual reality. Over the past thirty years, advances in imaging and electrophysiology have dramatically expanded the range of illusions and enabled new forms of analysis, thereby creating new and exciting ways to consider how the brain constructs the perceptual world. The Oxford Compendium of Visual Illusions is a collection of over one hundred chapters about illusions, displayed and discussed by the researchers who invented and conducted research on the illusions. Chapters include full-color images, associated videos, and extensive references. The book is divided into eleven sections: first, a presentation of general history and viewpoints on illusions, followed by sections on geometric, color, motion, space, faces, and cross-category illusions. The book will be of interest to vision scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, physicists, philosophers, artists, designers, advertisers, and educators curious about applied aspects of visual perception and the brain.

Reflexiones para una nueva regulación constitucional del Defensor del Pueblo

2013 ◽  
pp. 225-240
Author(s):  
Laura DÍEZ BUESO
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
The Other ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Essential Nature ◽  
Institutional System ◽  
The One ◽  
Selection Of

LABURPENA: Herriaren Defendatzailea Espainiako ordenamenduan sortu zenetik hogeita hamar urtetik gora igaro diren honetan, artikulu honek haren diseinu konstituzionala berriz taxutzea proposatzen du bi irizpideok oinarri hartuta: alde batetik, gure sistema instituzionalaren beharretara gehien egokitzen den Ombudsman eredua; bestetik, Defendatzaileak nola bete duen eskubideen bermatzaile-eginkizuna. Hortik abiatuta, erreforma-proposamenak bi ataletan biltzen dira. Lehendabizikoan, funtsezkoak izateagatik, Herriaren Defendatzailearen balizko erreforma konstituzionalean nahitaez kontuan hartu beharko liratekeen ezaugarriak jasotzen dira; haien artean, azpimarratzekoa da hura aukeratzeko gehiengoaren eta haren agintaldiaren iraupenaren zehaztapena. Bigarren atalean, erreforma konstituzionalean Estatuko erakundeak ahalik gehiena arautzea aukeratuko balitz, zer ezaugarri gehitzea komeniko litzatekeen jasotzen da; haien artean, erregelamendu-autonomia eta ofiziozko espedienteak abiarazteko duten ahalmena nabarmentzen dira. RESUMEN: Tras más de treinta años desde la incorporación del Defensor del Pueblo al ordenamiento español, este artículo propone una reformulación de su diseño constitucional partiendo de dos criterios: por un lado, cuál es hoy el modelo de Ombudsman que más se ajusta a las necesidades de nuestro sistema institucional; y, por otro, la forma en que el Defensor ha desarrollado su función como garante de derechos. A partir de aquí, las propuestas de reforma se agrupan en dos apartados. El primero dedicado a aquellos caracteres que, por su carácter esencial, deberían incluirse necesariamente en una eventual reforma constitucional del Defensor del Pueblo; entre ellos destaca la concreción de las mayorías para elegirlo y la duración de su mandato. El segundo apartado recoge los rasgos que convendría incorporar si la opción de la reforma constitucional fuera la de concretar al máximo la regulación de las instituciones estatales; entre ellos sobresale la autonomía reglamentaria y su capacidad para iniciar expedientes de oficio. ABSTRACT: After more than thirty years since the inclusión of the Ombudsman within the Spanish legal order, this article proposes a new design as of two criteria: on the one hand, which model of Ombudsman approaches nowadays better to the necessities of our institutional system; and on the other hand, the way by which the Ombudsman has developed its activities as guarantor of rights. From this point on, the proposals for reform can be put into two parts. The first one devoted to those features that due to its essential nature should necessarily be included in a prospective constitutional reform of the Ombudsman; among them it stands out the majorities required for the selection of the Ombudsman and the length of its office. The second part reflects the characteristics that should have if the option for the constitutional amendment would be to specify to the maximum the regulations of the State institutions; among them the statutory autonomy and its capacity to open administrative files.

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