On the Physical Aspect of Heraclitus' Psychology

Phronesis ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gábor Betegh
Keyword(s):  
Mass Term ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Physical Aspect ◽  
Count Noun ◽  
Mental Functions ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
The World ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
Physical Elements

AbstractThe paper first discusses the metaphysical framework that allows the soul's integration into the physical world. A close examination of B36, supported by the comparative evidence of some other early theories of the soul, suggests that the word psuchê could function as both a mass term and a count noun for Heraclitus. There is a stuff in the world, alongside other physical elements, that manifests mental functions. Humans, and possibly other beings, show mental functions in so far as they have a portion of that stuff. Turning to the physical characterization of the soul, the paper argues that B36 is entirely consistent with the ancient testimonies that say that psuchê for Heraclitus is exhalation. But exhalations cover all states of matter from the lowest moist part of atmospheric air to the fire of celestial bodies. If so, psuchê for Heraclitus is both air and fire. The fact that psuchê can manifest the whole range of physical properties along the dry-wet axis guarantees that souls can show different intellectual and ethical properties as well. Moreover, Sextus Empiricus, supported by some other sources, provides us with an answer how portions of soul stuff are individuated into individual souls. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the question whether, and if so with what qualifications, we can apply the term 'physicalism' to Presocratic theories of the soul.

PROMOTION OF LIFE SKILL EDUCATION FOR ADOLESCENTS

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Drdillip Giri ◽  
Jyoti Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Social Competence ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Life Skills ◽  
Regular Education ◽  
Peer Pressure ◽  
Educational Setting ◽  
Life Skill ◽  
Mental Functions ◽  
Educational Application ◽  
The World

This article focuses on the importance of Life skill education, which is an educational application of life skills to develop psycho social competence which helps an individual to develop his/her positive behaviour, so as to deal with the challenges and demand of everyday life. It is psycho social because it mainly deals mental functions such as awareness, attitude, leadership, creativity, appreciation and interaction with self, others and environment. It is a study of abilities, coping with peer pressure, emotion conflict and stress. UNICEF in 2009 has recommendation life skills based education should be given with the regular education. It has insisted LSBE should be contributed to a self inclusive gender free educational setting. Therefore research on LSBE is carried out massively in all parts in the world related to this education recently.

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 ...

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.

scholarly journals The absence of the caffeine synthase gene is involved in the naturally decaffeinated status of Coffea humblotiana, a wild species from Comoro archipelago

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Raharimalala ◽  
Stephane Rombauts ◽  
Andrew McCarthy ◽  
Andréa Garavito ◽  
Simon Orozco-Arias ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wild Species ◽  
Illegitimate Recombination ◽  
Recombination Mechanism ◽  
Comparative Analyses ◽  
Robusta Coffee ◽  
Caffeine Synthase ◽  
The World ◽  
Decaffeinated Coffee ◽  
Chromosome Level

AbstractCaffeine is the most consumed alkaloid stimulant in the world. It is synthesized through the activity of three known N-methyltransferase proteins. Here we are reporting on the 422-Mb chromosome-level assembly of the Coffea humblotiana genome, a wild and endangered, naturally caffeine-free, species from the Comoro archipelago. We predicted 32,874 genes and anchored 88.7% of the sequence onto the 11 chromosomes. Comparative analyses with the African Robusta coffee genome (C. canephora) revealed an extensive genome conservation, despite an estimated 11 million years of divergence and a broad diversity of genome sizes within the Coffea genus. In this genome, the absence of caffeine is likely due to the absence of the caffeine synthase gene which converts theobromine into caffeine through an illegitimate recombination mechanism. These findings pave the way for further characterization of caffeine-free species in the Coffea genus and will guide research towards naturally-decaffeinated coffee drinks for consumers.

scholarly journals III. On the nature and construction of the sun and fixed stars

1795 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 46-72 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Body ◽  
Planetary System ◽  
Considerable Progress ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Great Satisfaction ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Made In

Among the celestial bodies the sun is certainly the first which should attract our notice. It is a fountain of light that illuminates the world! it is the cause of that heat which main­tains the productive power of nature, and makes the earth a fit habitation for man! it is the central body of the planetary system; and what renders a knowledge of its nature still more interesting to us is, that the numberless stars which compose the universe, appear, by the strictest analogy, to be similar bodies. Their innate light is so intense, that it reaches the eye of the observer from the remotest regions of space, and forcibly claims his notice. Now, if we are convinced that an inquiry into the nature and properties of the sun is highly worthy of our notice, we may also with great satisfaction reflect on the considerable progress that has already been made in our knowledge of this eminent body. It would require a long detail to enumerate all the various discoveries which have been made on this subject; I shall, therefore, content myself with giving only the most capital of them.

scholarly journals Theoretical and Empirical Characterization of Water as a Factor: Examples and Related Issues with the World Trade Model

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 459
Author(s):  
Ignacio Cazcarro ◽  
Albert E. Steenge
Keyword(s):  
World Trade ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Virtual Water ◽  
Considerable Change ◽  
Water Research ◽  
Trade Model ◽  
The World ◽  
Main Model ◽  
Selection Of

This article originates from the theoretical and empirical characterization of factors in the World Trade Model (WTM). It first illustrates the usefulness of this type of model for water research to address policy questions related to virtual water trade, water constraints and water scarcity. It also illustrates the importance of certain key decisions regarding the heterogeneity of water and its relation to the technologies being employed and the prices obtained. With regard to WTM, the global economic input–output model in which multiple technologies can produce a “homogeneous output”, it was recently shown that two different mechanisms should be distinguished by which multiple technologies can arise, i.e., from “technology-specific” or from “shared” factors, which implies a mechanism-specific set of prices, quantities and rents. We discuss and extend these characterizations, notably in relation to the real-world characterization of water as a factor (for which we use the terms technology specific, fully shared and “mixed”). We propose that the presence of these separate mechanisms results in the models being sensitive to relatively small variations in specific numerical values. To address this sensitivity, we suggest a specific role for specific (sub)models or key choices to counter unrealistic model outcomes. To support our proposal we present a selection of simulations for aggregated world regions, and show how key results concerning quantities, prices and rents can be subject to considerable change depending on the precise definitions of resource endowments and the technology-specificity of the factors. For instance, depending on the adopted water heterogeneity level, outcomes can vary from relatively low-cost solutions to higher cost ones and can even reach infeasibility. In the main model discussed here (WTM) factor prices are exogenous, which also contributes to the overall numerical sensitivity of the model. All this affects to a large extent our interpretation of the water challenges, which preferably need to be assessed in integrated frameworks, to account for the main socioeconomic variables, technologies and resources.

Area Studies and Desire: Towards a Genealogy

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Hye-Joon Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Western Area ◽  
The World ◽  
38Th Parallel ◽  
The One

Area studies, as a newly fashionable field of academic research, needs to recognize its less likely precedents if it is going to secure for itself a fresh start. The question of “desire” is relevant here because it indicates the less value-free aspects in its genealogy. As shown in Emma Bovary's embellished representation of Paris at her provincial home, an understanding of an area often reflects the particular needs and desires of the one who understands that area. Such restricted and restricting views of an area repeats itself outside the world of literary fictions, as is shown by the example of Guizot's picture of Europe in which his own country is given a privileged place as the very center of Western civilization itself. An instructive case showing the thin line between the projected desire of one who strives to know a geographical area and the scientific purity of the labor itself is further offered by Napoleon Bonaparte's heavy reliance on Orientalist scholarship in his invasion of Egypt. Moving further east from Egypt to China, we witness the denigrating remarks on China made by the great German thinkers of the past century, Hegel and Weber. Although their characterization of Chinese culture could find echoes in unbiased empirical research, they reveal all the same the trace of Europeans' desire to affirm their superiority over the supposedly inferior and false civilization of the East. Similarly, the Americans who divided the Korean peninsular at the 38th Parallel, with unquestioning confidence in their knowledge of the area and in the justice of their action, rightfully deserve their place in the tradition of Western area studies of serving the needs to dominate, control and exploit an objectified overseas territory. He assumed that words had kept their meaning, that desires still pointed in a single direction, and that ideas retained their logic; and he ignored the fact that the world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys. From these elements, however, genealogy retrieves an indispensable restraint: it must record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history—in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts; it must be sensitive to their recurrence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in different roles. — Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (Foucault 139–40).

scholarly journals Characterization of three soybean landraces resistant to Asian soybean rust disease

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciano Nobuhiro Aoyagi ◽  
Yukie Muraki ◽  
Naoki Yamanaka
Keyword(s):  
Susceptible Variety ◽  
Soybean Rust ◽  
Resistance Locus ◽  
Chromosome 6 ◽  
Phakopsora Pachyrhizi ◽  
Rust Disease ◽  
Asian Soybean Rust ◽  
The World ◽  
Trait Locus

Abstract Phakopsora pachyrhizi is an obligatory biotrophic fungus that causes Asian soybean rust (ASR) disease. ASR control primarily involves chemical control and the use of resistant soybean cultivars carrying an Rpp (resistance to P. pachyrhizi) gene. This study aimed to characterize the ASR resistance of three soybean Asian landraces. By screening the world core collection (WC) of soybean, which consists of 80 varieties, three landraces were identified in Southeast Asia as resistant to ASR. Genetic mapping using the F2 population derived from a cross with an ASR-susceptible variety, BRS 184, indicated that KS 1034 (WC2) has ASR resistance conferred by a single dominant resistance gene, mapped on chromosome 18, in the same region where Rpp1 was mapped previously. The BRS 184 × WC61 (COL/THAI/1986/THAI-80) F2 population, on the other hand, showed an ASR resistance locus mapped by quantitative trait locus analysis on chromosome 6, in the region where the resistance conferred by PI 416764 Rpp3 resides, with a logarithm of the odds score peak at the same position as the marker, Satt079, while the BRS 184 × WC51 (HM 39) population showed the resistance to ASR allocated between Satt079 and Sat_263 markers, also in the region where Rpp3 was mapped previously. Both WC51 and WC61 have the same infection profile as FT-2 and PI 462312 when tested against the same ASR isolate panel. These three WCs can be used in MAS programs for introgression of Rpp1 and Rpp3 and the development of ASR-resistant cultivars in the breeding program.

scholarly journals The problem of evil in Hinduism

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-224
Author(s):  
Zoran Kindjic
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Educational Purpose ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Times ◽  
Unity Of Opposites

After having pointed to the different religious concepts of the origin of evil, the author focuses on the discussion of Hinduism as a typical paradigm of monism. Since the Indian deities are actually manifestations of the eternal arch principle, they contain within themselves the unity of opposites, i.e. they have both light and dark side. Evil which affects an individual is interpreted as sinning against the universal cosmic and moral order. The doctrine that man's destiny is determined by one's deeds in the previous incarnations is almost widely accepted in India. The idea of karma at the same time provides the cosmic justice and releases God from the responsibility for evil in the world. The impersonal law of karma also has the educational purpose. The whole world derived from the brahman and under the process of evolution. Through the numerous lives and the different experiences, suffering from the consequences of one's own behavior, an individual learn from the spiritual lessons. In the times of the cosmic crises, when evil prevails in the world, Vishnu incarnates in the figure of avatar to win over evil and to restore the blocked evolution. Although evil is defeated, it still cannot be entirely uprooted from the physical world. The salvation for man is possible only after dissolving personal ego and having enlightened oneself, transcends to the sphere of dualism.

scholarly journals Dog guides as witnesses with specific reference to Miles and Houellebecq

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Du Toit
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Guide Dogs ◽  
Contemporary Novels ◽  
Michel Houellebecq ◽  
The World ◽  
Constant Feature ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Wild Dog

Since Wild Dog first crawled from the Wet Wild Woods and laid his head on Woman’s lap, he has helped man, not only to hunt and protect, but also as guide. A guide with enhanced senses in the physical world who could find a way across unmarked landscapes, a clever empathic being who could lead man to certain places or to specific individuals. No wonder then that the best-known ancient dog deities accompany humans as guides, often on their way to the afterlife. Dog guides—not to be confused with guide dogs—have remained a constant feature of the representation of dogs in literature, reflecting as much of the nature of these dogs as of the nature and needs of the humans they attend. In this way, the human-animal relationship also reveals how the solipsistic tendencies of human self-definition limits our capacity for being in the world. In the two contemporary novels that form the basis of my enquiry, La Possibilité d’une île (2005) by Michel Houellebecq and Op ’n dag, ’n hond (2016) by John Miles, the agency of dog guides introduces an intriguing element of distancing, reminding us that the self has meaning only in relation to another and that human concerns are not absolute.

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