"Self-Knowledge and the Science of the Soul in Buridan's Quaestiones De Anima"

Buridan holds that the proper subject of psychology (i.e., the science undertaken in Aristotle’s De Anima) is the soul, its powers, and characteristic functions. But, on his view, the science of psychology should not be understood as including the body nor even the soul-body composite as its proper subject. Rather its subject is just “the soul in itself and its powers and functions insofar as they stand on the side of the soul". Buridan takes it as obvious that, even thus narrowly construed, such a science is possible. To the extent that this science includes the human or intellective soul, however, Buridan’s claim regarding its possibility is far from obvious. After all, like most of his contemporaries, Buridan takes the human soul to be immaterial. Thus, he readily admits that “the intellect cannot be sensed” and its operations are likewise inaccessible to the senses. Yet, on Buridan's broadly empiricist theory of knowledge, all (human) knowledge, including knowledge of the intellect or intellective soul, takes its start in the senses. How, then, is a science of the human soul possible? What is the nature or source of our knowledge of the intellect? In this paper, I reconstruct Buridan's answer to these questions. My discussion divides roughly into two parts. In the first, I set out the main elements of Buridan’s account of how we come to cognize the intellect, focusing on what he says about the genesis of our concept of the intellect. I then consider his account of our cognition of our own intellective states. As the discussion in part one make clear, Buridan holds that our concepts of intellect and of intellective states are both derived (inferentially) from subjective “experience” of our own states and rational activities. In part two, therefore, I try to elucidate Buridan’s notion of experience. Ultimately, I argue that it is a non-conceptual, non-discursive mode of self-awareness. I suggest, moreover, that it might best be understood in terms of our own notion of phenomenal consciousness. On the interpretation I advance, then, it turns out that, for Buridan, our concept of the intellect itself and, hence, the science of (human) psychology in general, is ultimately grounded in phenomenal experience of our own intellective states

Oral History in Information Systems Research: a reconsideration of a traditional tool

Considerable research has been done on ERP implementation projects and their success in organisations of various size. Project management has been identified as one of the critical success factors of the ERP implementation. The results from IS implementation success studies cannot be generalised to the small and medium business context. Few project management studies investigate project management activities in SME ERP implementation context. Many leading scholars in recent studies recognise outcome-focused approach to projects. This applied to the context of SME ERP projects means the project is not finished until the strategic objectives of the business, which were the rationale for adopting ERP, are realised. In this research, perceived factors of ERP project success from perspective of various stakeholder groups will be investigated and contrasted with IS Model of Success. There is increasing emphasis on determining the best fit project management approach based on type project type. Using the criteria specified in one of the available project typology methods as the framework, different views on SME ERP project type will be examined to obtain greater understanding of best fit project management approach for this type projects. Finally, using PMI’s project management knowledge areas as the structure, the project management activities that could impact achieving ERP adoption objectives will be explored. Data will be collected using semi structured interviews with project managers and ERP consultants. Participants will be asked to reflect on their experiences in SME ERP projects. There are contradictory views on many issues in SME ERP projects in terms of project success, best fit project management approach, and project management practices. Critical hermeneutics as the mode of analysis will be used for interpreting the text and making sense of SME ERP project as a temporary organisation

Facebook as a learning tool

Facebook is a social network that has been used by hundreds of people around the world. The network started as a technologically infused meeting place for college students to communicate socially. Since the inception, the network has blossomed into a global sensation. Such growth has spurred many uses for the site including the opportunity to add to the learning experiences for college students. Facebook is a tool in a learning revolution that incorporates the ease of technology and communication efforts between students and between teachers and students. This essay focuses on how Facebook can be used as a learning tool for teachers that support the ideologies of constructivist learning and student-centered methodologies. However, there are best practices that need to be taken into consideration when implementing the use of Facebook as a learning tool

No Tax for Phantom Income : How Congress Failed to Encourage Responsible Housing Consumption with Its Recent Tax Legislation

In the midst of the recent housing crisis, Congress passed two key pieces of federal tax legislation in an attempt to stem the tide of foreclosures and prevent further economic collapse. These two bills, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act in 2007 and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act in 2008, both sought competing goals: lessening the harm to existing homeowners, and encouraging purchases by new homebuyers. However, neither bill adequately addressed one of the root causes of the housing crisis, namely homeowners obtaining mortgages that, for whatever reason, they could not afford. Indeed, the tax incentives these bills created would likely perpetuate that problem. Instead of passing legislation that would provide tax incentives favoring responsible home purchasing, Congress enacted new laws that encouraged the very sort of risky behavior that led to the housing crisis in the first place. An analysis of the Congressional debates prior to the passages of the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act demonstrates that this failure stemmed in part from a misunderstanding by the legislators regarding how the new provisions of the Tax Code would work. This note explores the tension between the need for a short-term fix and the necessity of a responsible long-term economic behavior evident in the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act

Hong Kong’s Artificial Anti-Archipelago and the Unnaturing of the Natural

This chapter examines a proposal made by Hong Kong tycoon Gordon Wu to construct an artificial island in Hong Kong’s territorial waters in the late 1980s. His scheme has echoes in the Hong Kong government’s current plan to construct an “East Lantau Metropolis” on an artificial island in a similar same location. A close examination of Wu’s proposition reveals how it served not just commercial ambitions, but also expressed a more complex set of aims playing out through geopolitical intrigue and late-colonial domestic politics, as well as maneuverings for private dominance of urban and regional infrastructure. At an even more ulterior level, these activities additionally attempted an unconscious restructuring of the intercultural formations of nature(s) and landscape as they have emerged in Hong Kong

An estimate for the Morse index of a Stokes wave

Stokes waves are steady periodic water waves on the free surface of an infinitely deep irrotational two dimensional flow under gravity without surface tension. They can be described in terms of solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equation of a certain functional. This allows one to define the Morse index of a Stokes wave. It is well known that if the Morse indices of the elements of a set of non-singular Stokes waves are bounded, then none of them is close to a singular one. The paper presents a quantitative variant of this result.Comment: This version contains an additional reference and some minor change

The place and function of music in the secondary school curriculum

Thesis (M.M.)--Boston Universit