Descartes’ Concept of Will

This dissertation focuses on Descartes’ concept of will. Following the Scholastics Descartes takes the will, alongside intellect, to be the main faculty of the mind. The essence of the Cartesian mind is thinking. Most Cartesian scholars take this to mean that for Descartes the essence of the mind consists of thoughts as objects of awareness. I argue that willing is not just another type of thought on a par with conceiving, imaginging, and having sensory perceptions but that willing is as much an essential feature of the Cartesian mind as awareness. Without willing there would be no thinking; willing pertains to the essence of the mind. For Descartes, the will is so free it can never be coonstrained; an unfree will is a contradiction in terms. If willing pertains to the essence of the mind and if the will is essentially free then freedom pertains to the essence of the mind. We are essentially free beings; we would not remain the types of individuals we are now without freedom. Descartes wants to evaluate our volitional performance in different circumstances while taking into account different factors: the types of ideas involved, before/after an act of will is elicited, and the overall goal of our eliciting an act of will. Given these numerous factors he works with a threefold concept of freedom of will: freedom of spontaneity, freedom of indifference due to a balance of reasons and freedom of perversity. Although we cannot be deprived of freedom we can fail to exercise our wills and thus be deprived of the rights free will affords us. The rights in question are to receive credit and praise for our conduct, both cognitive and practical. Exercising our free will affords us the right to be praised for obtaining knowledge and for regulating our passions. Descartes’ emphasis on the role of the will in the theoretical realm (making assent an act of will) and in the practical sphere (making desire an act of will) is tantamount to viewing knowledge and our personalities (or pragmatic selves) not as blessings but as accomplishments, although a benevolent God has endowed us with faculties especially well-suited for arriving at the truth and for pursuing the good. For Descartes, believing the truth is not an automatic process resulting from our mental make-up but the result of properly investigating the matter, paying attention and deliberately applying the appropriate common notion (though, extension or the union between mind and body). Similarly, leading an embodied human existence is more than acting on the guidance of our appetites and emotions; it means using reason and experience to keep emotions in check and integrate them into a coherent pragmatic self. Both in believing the truth and in creating a pragmatic self we manifest ourselves as agents: what we do is not only up to us but obtains because of us

Desc(ART) or the 21st Century Cartesian Meditator

In this paper I argue that the continued relevance of Descartes\u27 philosophy for present-day concerns can be demonstrated by bringing to bear on his Meditations state-of-the-art developments in Informal logic and Argumentation theory, specifically Leo Groarke’s approach to multimodal arguments. I show that the meditative exercises that Descartes viewed as preconditions of establishing the metaphysical tenets of his system can be recast in present-day form using technological tools and media that we are familiar with. We will see that, due to the different historical and cultural contexts, the 21st century Cartesian meditating process can be: 1) technology-enhanced (a customizable, multimodal process using images and nonverbal sounds alongside verbal claims) and 2) interdisciplinary (sensitive to and informed by the history of philosophy, of ideas and of art). Reformulated and practised in this way, Descartes’ meditative exercises can serve as tools for honing much-needed critical thinking skills and dispositions, as well as for promoting autonomous decision-making. After providing examples of this contemporary Cartesian meditation, I suggest that Groarke’s multimodal approach can be extended to reconstructing the arguments of other philosophers thus supplying a way of doing history of philosophy that is both novel and has personal benefits for its practitioners

Déconstruction, auto-immunité, précarité. De l’intraduisible politique chez Derrida

In this paper we try to analyze that which in Jacques Derrida’s philosophical and political thinking is called “political untranslatable” through a triple movement described in the late texts: a deconstruction movement, which can be found in his entire works and which, in terms of political philosophy, aims to identify in politics an untranslatable remain that cannot be contained in any binary categories of philosophy; an autoimmune movement, which stretches and complicates deconstruction and which expresses the capacity of western political philosophy concepts to obliterate themselves from their inside. The political untranslatable, in terms of autoimmunity, signifies the difficulty, if not impossibility of transferring these concepts from a historical experience to another. Finally, the precariousness movement completes deconstruction and autoimmune vocabulary and refers to the necessity of considering, in any philosophical composition, the fragility of political, economic or social structures of the globalized world in which we live. The political untranslatable is another name for the rest of our individual and collective lives that resist to any recovery in totalizing ideologies

EFFICIENT CAUSATION – A HISTORY. Edited by Tad M. Schmaltz. Oxford Philosophical Concepts. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press

A new series entitled Oxford Philosophical Concepts (OPC) made its debut in November 2014. As the series’ Editor Christia Mercer notes, this series is an attempt to respond to the call for and the tendency of many philosophers to invigorate the discipline. To that end each volume will rethink a central concept in the history of philosophy, e.g. efficient causation, health, evil, eternity, etc. “Each OPC volume is a history of its concept in that it tells a story about changing solutions to specific philosophical problems” (xiii). The series presents itself as innovative along three main lines: its reexamination of the so-called “canon,” its reconsidering the value of interdisciplinary exchanges, and its encouraging philosophers to move beyond the current borders of philosophy. By engaging with non-Western traditions and carefully considering topics and materials which are not strictly philosophical, the collections from this series aim to render the history of philosophy accessible to a wide audience. The first OPC volume to appear in print is “Efficient Causation – A History” edited by Tad Schmaltz. Using careful historical and philosophical analysis as well as interdisciplinary reflections this anthology proposes to tell the story of how efficient causation, equated nowadays with “causation” tout court, came to play its prominent role in our philosophical and scientific vocabulary. Eleven contributions cover the period from Ancient times (Aristotle and the Stoics), through the Middle Ages (both the Western and the Islamic traditions), passing through the Early Modern times (represented here by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Malebranche, Berkeley and Hume), all the way to Kant and finally contemporary philosophers (classified into two opposing camps: Humean and Neo-Aristotelian). There are also four reflections which explore the applications of the notion of efficient causation to areas different from philosophy, especially the arts (literature, music, painting, etc.)

The Formula One Tire Changing Robot (F1-T.C.R.)

Formula One racing is one of the most fascinating sports ever, it is a perfect combination of high speed, technology, pressure and danger. One problem associated with car racing is the time differential between teams during pits stops, which substantially affects the final results. In addition, a high percentage of the accidents in Formula One is due to pit stop problems. Changing the tires of a car while almost in motion, after reaching dangerous pressure and temperature values, is a very risky challenge, no matter how well a team is trained. Approximately 15-25 people are constantly exposed to serious dangers. The risks taken are extreme and any idea of reducing it without affecting the quality of the race should be considered. Our idea is to build a fully robotized system that takes over the tire changing and refueling, process. There will practically be no need for human intervention. The system will demonstrate remarkable time accuracy, precision and low risk implications.© 2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.libproxy.bridgeport.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=76999

The Importance of Marketing Communication in the Touristic Negotiation

The article deals with a complex and original field of analysis – the role that promotional communication can have within the commercial negotiation process between tour-operating agencies and hotels. In a business world dominated by competitiveness, every method regarding the optimization of the negotiation process is welcomed from the point of view of modern organizations. Therefore, the present research finds its utility through its scope – measuring the impact of marketing communication upon the stages of the negotiation process in the field of touristic services.I propose a series of factors - variables that influence the different stages of negotiation, and analyse their importance into the context.The research conclusions reveal the fact that some correlations can be outlined between the different aspects of the negotiation process and the promotional communications of the two parties involved. Also, a very interesting path for further research is represented by the effect that the correlation between internal and external marketing communication can have upon the activity of the two partners in the negotiations process. 

Ergonomic and Efficient Software Alternatives for High Cost Manipulators - Direct, Wireless and Networked Control Techniques

The process of deciding-on and purchasing the right manipulator(s) for a predetermined task can often turn to be very frustrating, especially when budget and purchase timing are essential factors. The market tends to get larger and variety driven and there is a choice for almost any given price range, however, the price / size ratio seems to remain constant. Larger scale manipulators do not show the price amortization enjoyed by the majority of computerized consumer hardware over the past few years. In addition, the manufacturers for many of these manipulators do not provide adequate pre-sales supporting technical material (whether a result of lack of standardized specifications or pure negligence), nor effective warranties and service. Primarily affected are higher level educational institutions, where manipulators are likely to be exposed to student projects that demand constant diversity and various controlling software and hardware technique. These manipulators are likely to become victims of abusive usage and, in addition, the institutions need to offer some of the highest standards of safety for the students. This paper presents a software simulation and control package applied on a specific manipulator. The package presents a significant tool in solving problems such as the above mentioned ones. In addition, the software offers a variety of implementation examples that can be directly derived from the simulation package

Web Based Virtual Robot Prototyping and Manufacturing

Developing an environment that enables optimal and flexible design of robot manipulators using reconfigurable links, joints, actuators, and sensors is an essential concept towards efficient robot design and prototyping. Such an environment should have a complex set of software and hardware subsystems for designing the physical parts and the controllers, and for the algorithmic control of the robot modules (kinematics, inverse kinematics, dynamics, trajectory planning, analog control and digital computer control). Specifying object-based communications and catalog mechanisms between the software modules, controllers, physical parts, CAD designs, and actuator and sensor components is a necessary step in the prototyping activities. In this project, we propose a web interface based prototyping environment for robot manipulators with the required subsystems and interfaces between the different components of this environment. The goal is to build a system of components that allows potential customers (located anywhere geographically) to input through a web interface a set of request / design parameters and specifications (such as torque, dexterity, repeatability, velocity etc), that could be analyzed, simulated and converted to specific manufacturing information that can be ultimately used by an automated manufacturing plant. The plant would be able to build consumer robots tailored to specific requirements and deliverable to customers flexibly

Remote Learning: A World-Wide-Web Operated Robot Arm

The World-Wide-Web has been used extensively in the past few years of its existence for data exchange, and information gathering. Web online control, on the other hand, is a new emerging field, which has not yet been fully exploited and holds in it a great impact on currently available control systems. This paper discusses an application of online Internet control service - a WWW controlled robotic manipulator arm