1,415 research outputs found
On the structure of the geomagnetic field at great distances from earth
Solar wind and current sheet considered in determining shape of magnetosphere boundary and calculation of magnetic field line
Recommended from our members
Literacy, Orality, and the Brokerage of Power and Authority in Late Antique Egyptian Christianity
The question of literary genre is closely connected with the line of development of Christianity in general, and of the Egyptian desert movement of the late antique period in particular. From different Christian practices and experimentations with asceticism in the third and fourth centuries of the common era emerge differing forms of expression and articulation. In Egypt, for instance, there evolve at least three distinct genres that take different forms and yet are spurred by the very same phenomenon of the practice of askesis and/or the encounter with men and women who endeavor to coin and to improve on such ascetic practices. One literary genre is the emerging elaboration of rules and manuals regulating and governing the daily monastic activities; this genre, albeit a later development in the Egyptian desert tradition, comes to be very influential with the passage of time, particularly in the western and the eastern churches. In this vein is the activity of Basil of Caesarea, when he attempts to write the Shorter and the Longer Rules, and of many others. The production of rules is furthermore strictly associated with the construction of one particular â perhaps totalitarian in its character â model of ascetic life, namely cenobism. This is the kind of genre which will not be treated here but it will remain in the background as a reminder of other possible developments articulating divergent forms of not only literature, but also of actual ascetic practices
Recommended from our members
Literacy, Orality, and the Brokerage of Power and Authority in Late Antique Egyptian Christianity
The question of literary genre is closely connected with the line of development of Christianity in general, and of the Egyptian desert movement of the late antique period in particular. From different Christian practices and experimentations with asceticism in the third and fourth centuries of the common era emerge differing forms of expression and articulation. In Egypt, for instance, there evolve at least three distinct genres that take different forms and yet are spurred by the very same phenomenon of the practice of askesis and/or the encounter with men and women who endeavor to coin and to improve on such ascetic practices. One literary genre is the emerging elaboration of rules and manuals regulating and governing the daily monastic activities; this genre, albeit a later development in the Egyptian desert tradition, comes to be very influential with the passage of time, particularly in the western and the eastern churches. In this vein is the activity of Basil of Caesarea, when he attempts to write the Shorter and the Longer Rules, and of many others. The production of rules is furthermore strictly associated with the construction of one particular â perhaps totalitarian in its character â model of ascetic life, namely cenobism. This is the kind of genre which will not be treated here but it will remain in the background as a reminder of other possible developments articulating divergent forms of not only literature, but also of actual ascetic practices
Aspect acquisition in Russian as the weaker language: evidence from a Turkish-Russian child
Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study aims to contribute to the discussion about the weaker language development by examining the effect of restricted input and use on the acquisition of the morphological category of aspect in Russian by a TurkishâRussian bilingual child in a Turkish-dominant environment. The main goal the study pursues is to investigate whether the reduced input and restricted use of Russian, mainly through communication with a Russian-speaking mother, is still sufficient for monolingual-like acquisition of Russian aspect. Design/methodology/approach: This study is a longitudinal case study. Data and analysis: The main source of data collection is video and audio recordings. Twenty-five recordings are available. They cover the period of between two years and 11 months (2;11) and 4;0. First, the data is examined in terms of the availability of perfective and imperfective forms and meanings they (these forms) express in the Russian language. Then, we look into whether the data of the bilingual child is marked with deviations from the monolingual Russian data in terms of error rates and patterns.
Findings/conclusions: The findings of the study suggest that despite the reduced input, the acquisition of Russian aspect in the Turkish-dominant environment follows the same pattern as a monolingual acquisition does. Originality, and significance/implications: The study contributes to the discussion about the weaker language development in bilingual contexts and adds to the growing body of research looking at the development of a particular language in a variety of different contexts
Examining possible sources of L2 divergence at the pragmatics interface: Turkish accusative in the end-state grammar of L1 Russian and L1 English users of L2 Turkish
The Interface Hypothesis (IH) postulates that interface structures are potentially vulnerable to incomplete acquisition in the end-state L2. Two plausible explanations have been suggested as possible causes of the L2 divergence at the interface: (1) the interaction between two competing grammatical systems, and (2) differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in integrating information from different domains in L2. This study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the interface phenomenon and to examine the extent to which L1 interference might account for L2 divergence at the interface. To this end, the study examines the use of Turkish accusative case (AC) in the end-state L2 grammar of L1 Russian and L1 English advanced users of L2 Turkish. The findings provide additional evidence for the IH and suggest that L2 divergence at the interface is likely to reflect more differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in integrating information from different domains rather than L1 interference
SEROLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF CYTOMEGALOVIRUS ANTIBODY DISTRIBUTION AMONG PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT AGE
No abstrac
Varelaâs Legacy for ALIFE: from Enactive to Enlightened AI
Francisco Varela started his scientific pursuits in the field of biology migrating to cognitive neuroscience later in his research career. To understand Varelaâs legacy, we need to trace the evolution of his thought and the influences upon it. His reading appears wildly eclectic, ranging from second-order cybernetics, constructivism, analytical and phenomenological philosophy to Sufism and Buddhism. The contribution of his thought has an outstanding outreach: biology, immunology, autonomous systems, cognitive science, first-person methodologies, and consciousness studies, amongst others. This might appear as a hodgepodge of interests that captured his great mind. However, a deeper look reveals a common theme which expressed itself in a multiplicity of manifestations. The main question that preoccupied him throughout was What is Life? In his search for the answer, Varela moved from the evident to the hidden, making the hidden evident in the process. His starting point was theoretical reflection on the natural systems, and so autopoiesis was born (Varela, Maturana, and Uribe, 1974, Biosystems, 5(4), 187-196). Autopoiesis [from Greek αáœÏo- (auto-), meaning 'self', and ÏοίηÏÎčÏ (poiesis), meaning 'creationâ] does not simply mean a system that reproduces and maintains itself in its physical form (boundary). Autopoiesis entails emergence of the self and, with it, the world through the process of âsense-makingâ driven by the re-actions of attraction and repulsion to the aspects of the environment that have valence (meaning) in terms of organismâs function (Thompson, 2004, Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, 3(4), 381-398). The perceptual and behavioural (sensorimotor) âsense-makingâ habits are shaped and constrained by the biological/neural processes, which are in turn reinforced by the âsense-makingâ habits. Like the Ouroboros that continually consumes itself, a living system continuously creates and re-creates its ârealityâ, for better or worse. In the language of Buddhism, autopoiesis is a biological description of the creation of the species-specific and individual karmic patterns that structure oneâs view of ârealityâ, with the strongest habit of all: a perceptual structure of self and other, subject and object, which in the case of humans becomes a pervasive cognitive habit. The perceptual habit which serves a useful functional purpose of biological survival becomes reified into âIâ/âmeâ and the âworldâ, at which point we are not just enacting our world, but we are âeveilingâ it (notice what happens if the second âeâ is dropped). According to Buddhism, this process of reification (grasping) or fixation on the aspects of our experience is the root of all âevilâ (ignorance of how things really are). We do not know what happens for a simple organism, like a bacterium or a single cell, but we know for us humans this strong perceptual habit and reification of subject and object results in naĂŻve realism: there is a world out there with the objects that obey the laws of physics and retain their properties whether we are there to perceive them or not, and that our senses provide us with perception of the objects as they really are. With some education, we can revise it to a representationalist view, where we understand that our experience of objects is our internal representation of them. But, in this view, there are still objects out there âhittingâ our senses in different ways according to the laws of physics. The shortcomings of representationalism are tackled in detail in The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (Maturana and Varela, 1987, Shambala Publications). In short, the so called âobjectsâ experienced by the âsubjectâ are not representations of some features of the environment, but the patterns of neural firing - the perturbations of the organism itself. On the surface of things, this sounds like a materialist statement reducing subjective experience to neural processes. However, Varela in his later work turns the tables completely with the aid of continental phenomenology and Buddhist philosophy of the Middle Way (Madhyamika). The hidden is brought into the evident in one of his most influential books The Embodied Mind (TEM) co-authored with Evan Thompson and Eleonor Rosch (1991, MIT Press). A paradigm of enaction formulated in TEM as an alternative to representationalism was well received and is being gradually assimilated by the field of AI and robotics. However, its more subtle but most potent message often gets missed or misinterpreted in the post-TEM formulations of âenactivistâ approach, rendering it flat and innocuous from shaking us out of naĂŻve realism, which continues to haunt us perceptually throughout life and shapes our science as an expression of this dualistic perception despite conceptual education to the contrary. (For an articulation of the differences between enaction and âenactivismâ see Vörös and Bitbol, 2017, Constructivist Foundations, 13(1), 31-40). This subtle and potent message gets reiterated again in a new form in Varelaâs paper Neurophenomenology: A methodological remedy for the hard problem (1996, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3(4), 330-349). The âhard problemâ as formulated by Chalmers is how and why subjective experience arises from the brain (body) processes. Chalmerâs argues that experience is ânot an
explanatory posit, but an explanandum in its own right, and so it is not a candidate for [reductive] eliminationâ. Some âextra ingredientâ is necessary to account for how (and why) experience arises from the workings of the brain. What is needed is a nonreductive explanation. Varela agrees, but he proposes a âremedyâ, rather than an ontological âsolutionâ. His special ingredient is not something âextraâ that Chalmers calls for. This special ingredient is not just methodological. Varelaâs statement: âInstead of finding âextra ingredientsâ to account for how consciousness emerges from matter and brain, my proposal reframes the question to that of finding meaningful bridges between two irreducible phenomenal domains.â [italics mine] is often interpreted as simply a pragmatic and paradigmatic proposal of using firstperson data alongside third-person (e.g. neuroimaging) data in cognitive neuroscience. The key, however, is that the third-person data, whether brainâs neural dynamic or bodyâs physiological process, is framed here as another phenomenal domain. In other words, the true problem with the âhard problemâ is a lack of recognition that the brains and bodies are yet another aspect of our phenomenal experience, in the same way that our thoughts, emotions and the sense of self are. We will do well to use our methodological tools afforded by technological progress for the empirical study of the relationships between different aspects of our experience, but we err when we reify (objectify) the âobjectsâ of our scientific investigation. A methodological reduction as an empirical strategy is necessary and productive. In Varelaâs words (1976, Coevolution Quarterly, p. 64): ââŠfor every system there is an environment which can (if we so decide) be looked at as a larger whole where the initial system participates. Since it would be impractical to do this at all times, we often chop out our system of interest, and put all the rest in the background as âenvironmentâ⊠To do this on purpose is quite useful; to forget that we did so is quite dangerousâ. However, what is even more dangerous, and is the root of the hard problem, is an ontological reduction, either materialist or idealist, or any other form of ontological monism or dualism for that matter, born out of reification of a particular aspect of our experience that we have become fixated upon for the purpose and in the process of analytical or empirical investigation. Varelaâs remedy for the hard problem echoes Wittgensteinâs âtreatmentâ of âphilosophical illnessâ â a shift in perspective that reveals the incorrectness of assumptions giving rise to a perceived âproblemâ (Bitbol, 2012, Constructivist Foundations, 7(3), 165-173). Seeing through our presuppositions born out of reification dissolves (rather than solves) the hard problem and reveals what is hidden by always being in plain view â the primacy of experience or awareness. âLived experience is where we start from and where we all must link back to, like a guiding threadâ (Varela 1996, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3(4), p. 334). This radicality of Neurophenomenology is often overlooked (Bitbol and Antonova, 2016, Constructivist Foundations, 11(2), 354-356). It is not enough to understand the point conceptually. The true potency of the remedy is only achieved through the personal âmutationâ. To swallow Varelaâs pill sincerely and wholeheartedly requires deep personal commitment to the transformation of oneâs conscious experience and its application to all life, including our scientific pursuits. Why a commitment? Because of our deeply engrained habit of reification that required repeated âtreatmentâ, over and over again, every time it surfaces. Why is it difficult to apply? Because of our tendency for âCartesian Anxietyâ â our need for a fixed foundation for knowledge, and absolute stable ground, without which we fall into chaos due to our low tolerance of uncertainty. We have low capacity for sitting with the unknown. Instead of staying with the question, we fall for an answer, however problematic. The middle way between absolutism and nihilism is the stance of âgroundlessnessâ (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, 1991). In TEM, âgroundlessnessâ is argued from the Madhyamikaâs point of view. It is not only a conceptual doctrine, but an experiential stance, a way of being, free of reification of any kind. The growing field of Contemplative Neuroscience is starting to provide us with glimpses as to what happens to the neural dynamics of meditation practitioners who are able to rest in âgroundlessnessâ for periods of time. Experienced mindfulness practitioners show a weaker formation of perceptual habits as demonstrated by reduced habituation to repeated auditory startles (Antonova et al., 2015, PLoS One, 10(5):e0123512); less predictability of neural dynamics (Nehaniv and Antonova, 2017, IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, 1753-1761); greater speed and fluidity of neural dynamics during semantic processing (Pagnoni et al., 2008, PloS One, 3(9):e3083), and decoupling of sensory experience of pain from its affective component (Grant et al., 2011, Pain, 152(1), 150-156) supporting the dictum: âPain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.â (Haruki Murakami). Relaxing the reification of the âselfâ as âIâ or âmeâ in the state of mindfulness attenuates the activity of the Default Mode Network (DMN) (for more details on âselfâ and the DMN with the implication for AI/robotics see Antonova and Nehaniv in this volume). In conclusion, I would like to propose a new circularity â that between the fields of AI/robotics and Contemplative Neuroscience (CN). CN could and should become a new source for AI/robotics in informing on cognitive and neural dynamics of enaction that do not lead to âeveilingâ. AI/robotics and computational neuroscience could become a testing ground for neural (or other) models of âgroundlessâ cognition, assisting humans in achieving de-reification through brain-computer interfaces or immersive experiences such as created in a fascinating exhibition Artist and Robots in Paris exploring Artificial Imagination of AI (https://www.grandpalais.fr/en/event/artists-robots). And finally, my challenge as a contemplative neuroscientist to my AI/robotics colleagues: can we build an Artificial Buddha that functions out of wisdom and compassion for the benefit of all beings? Who experiences and cognizes Life as an eternal dance of polarities rather than a perpetual war of dualistic opposites brought about by reification of basic structures of experience; ALife being that at all times follows three basic Buddhist instructions for Life free of suffering: non-grasping, non-grasping, non-grasping
Terrorist Crimes in the Era of Digitalization: Forms of Activity and Measures for Counteraction
Objective: to elaborate recommendations on counteraction against terrorist crimes committed in the digital (cyber-) space and/or using digital technologies.Methods: the methodological basis of the research are the universal dialectic method of cognition, the integrity of general and specific scientific methods such as analysis, synthesis, logical method, ascent from the abstract to the specific, induction, deduction, etc.Results: it was determined that the development of the digital (cyber-) space and digital technologies promotes the intensity of terrorism and has led to the change of the mechanism of terrorist crimes commitment. A conclusion was made that, to provide the efficiency of measures for counteracting terrorist crimes committed in the digital (cyber-) space and/or using digital technologies, a distinct strategy is necessary, as well as the appropriate regulatory basis.ScientiïŹc novelty: the article analyzes such forms of criminal activities of terrorist groups, committed in the digital (cyber-) space and/or using digital technologies, as dissemination of the ideology of violence and propaganda of terrorist activity, recruiting new members and their training, implementing digital technologies for preparation and immediate terrorist activity, and funding. The advantages were revealed of the use of digital space and/or digital technologies when committing terrorist crimes. In the authorâs opinion, the change of the mechanism of terrorist crimes commitment associated with the use of digital technologies should be taken into account during criminalization (change of the intensity of penalization) of publicly dangerous deeds. The important areas of state policy in the sphere of counteraction against these crimes are education and enlightenment activity, training of the personnel of law-enforcement agencies, broadening their authorities to ensure a clear and effective control over digital content.Practical signiïŹcance: is due to the possibility to use the formulated conclusions and proposals for further scientific elaboration of the state criminal policy in the sphere of counteraction against terrorist crimes committed in the digital (cyber-) space and/or using digital technologies
- âŠ