Socratic Suicide

2001 ◽  
Vol 121 ◽  
pp. 91-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Warren

AbstractWhen is it rational to commit suicide? More specifically, when is it rational for a Platonist to commit suicide, and more worryingly, is it ever not rational for a Platonist to commit suicide? If the Phaedo wants us to learn that the soul is immortal, and that philosophy is a preparation for a state better than incarnation, then why does it begin with a discussion defending the prohibition of suicide? In the course of that discussion, Socrates offers (but does not necessarily endorse) two arguments for the prohibition of self-killing, at least in most circumstances, which have exerted a long and powerful influence over subsequent discussion of the topic, particularly in theist contexts. In the context of the Phaedo itself, however, this introductory conversation plays a crucial role in setting the agenda for the remainder of the dialogue and offering an initial discussion of the major concerns of the argument as a whole. In particular, the discussion of the nature of suicide is intimately bound up with Socrates' conception of true philosophy as a ‘preparation for death’, the relationship between soul and body, and the immortality of the soul. My intention is to provide a reading of that passage (61e-69e) which asks whether the Phaedo can offer a philosophically satisfying distinction between suicide and philosophy and how it relates to other ancient philosophical attitudes to self-killing. I argue that Socrates does not think that being dead is always preferable to being alive, and that the religious views expressed in the passage are consistent with his general stance on the benevolence of the gods.

Author(s):  
Cécile Boex

Since March 2011 the revolt in Syria has engendered a considerable and heterogeneous mass of videos made by demonstrators, activists, and fighters and posted on the Internet. During the peaceful manifestations between 2011 and 2013, the videos played a crucial role in the narrative of the revolt but also in the emergence of new modes of protesting focused on the work of the image. The author questions the effects of amateur video on the perception of the protest as well as on protest activities themselves in an ultra-repressive context. She pays particular attention to the relationship between the act of filming and the act of protesting, both linked by bodies, words, and emotions. Thus, it is an issue of exploring the different visual dimensions of the revolt in Syria, in accordance with the evolution of the movement and the spaces it occupied, to understand better how the protest experience is articulated and put into images.


Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden

The first chapter examines musical portraits of literary figures. It first explores Virgil Thomson’s multiple works in the genre including his portrait of Gertrude Stein, to interpret the influence of Stein’s modernist literary portraits on Thomson’s compositions. It then turns to Pierre Boulez’s orchestral portrait Pli selon pli: portrait de Mallarmé. Analyzing Boulez’s incorporation of elements of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry as well as the complex and idiosyncratic theories regarding the relationship between poetry and music that Mallarmé developed in his essays. Through the discussion of these portraits, the chapter addresses the crucial role of language in the musical representation of identity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 54-56
Author(s):  
Ashmita Dahal Chhetri

Advertisements have been used for many years to influence the buying behaviors of the consumers. Advertisements are helpful in creating the awareness and perception among the customers of a product. This particular research was conducted on the 100 young male and female who use different brands of product to check the influence of advertisement on their buying behavior while creating the awareness and building the perceptions. Correlation, regression and other statistical tools were used to identify the relationship between these variables. The results revealed that the relationship between media and consumer behavior is positive. The adve1tising impact on sales and there is positive and high degree relationship between advertising and consumer behavior. The impact on advertising of a product of electronic media is better than non-electronic media.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 2972
Author(s):  
Zhili Zuo ◽  
Jinhua Cheng ◽  
Haixiang Guo ◽  
Yonglin Li

Based on resource carrying capacity, this study used the revised theory of relative resource carrying capacity (RRCC) and introduced an innovative concept of relative fossil energy carrying capacity (RFECC), which evaluates the degree of fossil energy sustainability based on the relationship between economy, population, and environment. This study took China and the United States as the study objects, took the whole country as the reference area, and calculated the RFECC of population, economic, and environmental resources from 2000 to 2018. Therefore, based on the comparative analysis, the following conclusions were drawn: (i) there is a big difference in the RFECC between China and the United States, which is manifested in the inverted U-shaped trend in China and the U-shaped trend in the United States; (ii) the relative fossil energy carrying states in China and the United States are different, mainly reflected in the economy and environment; (iii) the gap in RFECC between China and the United States has gradually widened; in general, China’s economic RFECC is better than that of the United States, while environmental RFECC and population RFECC in the United States is better than that of China; and (iv) coal and oil should be used as a breakthrough point for the sustainable fossil energy and sustainable development for China and the United States, respectively.


Author(s):  
Bettoni Roberta ◽  
Valentina Riva ◽  
Chiara Cantiani ◽  
Elena Maria Riboldi ◽  
Massimo Molteni ◽  
...  

AbstractStatistical learning refers to the ability to extract the statistical relations embedded in a sequence, and it plays a crucial role in the development of communicative and social skills that are impacted in the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Here, we investigated the relationship between infants’ SL ability and autistic traits in their parents. Using a visual habituation task, we tested infant offspring of adults (non-diagnosed) who show high (HAT infants) versus low (LAT infants) autistic traits. Results demonstrated that LAT infants learned the statistical structure embedded in a visual sequence, while HAT infants failed. Moreover, infants’ SL ability was related to autistic traits in their parents, further suggesting that early dysfunctions in SL might contribute to variabilities in ASD symptoms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Saveski ◽  
Edmond Awad ◽  
Iyad Rahwan ◽  
Manuel Cebrian

AbstractAs groups are increasingly taking over individual experts in many tasks, it is ever more important to understand the determinants of group success. In this paper, we study the patterns of group success in Escape The Room, a physical adventure game in which a group is tasked with escaping a maze by collectively solving a series of puzzles. We investigate (1) the characteristics of successful groups, and (2) how accurately humans and machines can spot them from a group photo. The relationship between these two questions is based on the hypothesis that the characteristics of successful groups are encoded by features that can be spotted in their photo. We analyze >43K group photos (one photo per group) taken after groups have completed the game—from which all explicit performance-signaling information has been removed. First, we find that groups that are larger, older and more gender but less age diverse are significantly more likely to escape. Second, we compare humans and off-the-shelf machine learning algorithms at predicting whether a group escaped or not based on the completion photo. We find that individual guesses by humans achieve 58.3% accuracy, better than random, but worse than machines which display 71.6% accuracy. When humans are trained to guess by observing only four labeled photos, their accuracy increases to 64%. However, training humans on more labeled examples (eight or twelve) leads to a slight, but statistically insignificant improvement in accuracy (67.4%). Humans in the best training condition perform on par with two, but worse than three out of the five machine learning algorithms we evaluated. Our work illustrates the potentials and the limitations of machine learning systems in evaluating group performance and identifying success factors based on sparse visual cues.


1963 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. W. Arnold ◽  
M. L. Dudzinski

Data from thirty-five digestibility trials with sheep in metabolism cages were used to investigate statistically the relationships between organic matter intake (I), faecal organic matter output (F), and the nitrogen concentration in faecal organic matter (N).The data fell easily into groups due to botanical or seasonal differences in the feed. These groups of data were homogeneous and provided highly significant linear equations of the forms I = bF + cFN and I = a + cFN. When compared these groups of data sometimes showed differences in slope, position or both. A quadratic expressionI = bF + cFN + dFN2was found to accommodate a majority of the data but to be less precise than I = a + cFN.A further expression incorporating N as an independent variable was also examined,I = a + cFN2 + eN.This expression, although far from being universally adequate, proved to be generally better than existing formulae. When applied to the data of Greenhalgh et. al. (1960), it substantially reduced heterogeneity between data for spring and data for summer pastures.Causes of variation in the relationship between organic-matter intake and nitrogen in faeces, and some of the hazards of extrapolation from empirical regression relations, are discussed.


Genus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Priulla ◽  
Nicoletta D’Angelo ◽  
Massimo Attanasio

AbstractThis paper investigates gender differences in university performances in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses in Italy, proposing a novel application through the segmented regression models. The analysis concerns freshmen students enrolled at a 3-year STEM degree in Italian universities in the last decade, with a focus on the relationship between the number of university credits earned during the first year (a good predictor of the regularity of the career) and the probability of getting the bachelor degree within 4 years. Data is provided by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR). Our analysis confirms that first-year performance is strongly correlated to obtaining a degree within 4 years. Furthermore, our findings show that gender differences vary among STEM courses, in accordance with the care-oriented and technical-oriented dichotomy. Males outperform females in mathematics, physics, chemistry and computer science, while females are slightly better than males in biology. In engineering, female performance seems to follow the male stream. Finally, accounting for other important covariates regarding students, we point out the importance of high school background and students’ demographic characteristics.


1977 ◽  
Vol 45 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1076-1078 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Bassett ◽  
Edward B. Blanchard ◽  
William F. Gayton ◽  
Kenneth L. Ozmon

To examine the relationship between performance on the Frostig Developmental Test of Visual Perception and birth order, 578 first-graders were tested. Later-born children performed significantly better than did firstborns on specific subtests of the Frostig (Visual-motor Coordination and Figure-ground Perception). There was a significant interaction on Perceptual Constancy which indicated that later-born males performed significantly better than did firstborn males. A secondary finding was a r of .547, a stronger relationship between intelligence level and global perceptual performance than previously reported.


1966 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 645-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara J. Powell ◽  
M. E. Ogle ◽  
L. K. Martin ◽  
D. K. Kamano

In studying the relationship between level of CS intensity (light) and drug condition (amobarbital sodium) in the acquisition of the conditioned avoidance response of the white rat in a jump-box task, data showed that both variables influenced avoidance performance. Although the over-all performance of drugged Ss was better than that of those given a placebo, primary differences occurred at 50,000 and 800,000 peak candles of CS intensity; performance of Ss under placebo showed a marked decline at 800,000 peak candles.


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