Black & Davidson on Metaphor

Most theories of metaphor look at what occurs inside a metaphorical phrase and posit a shift in meaning in the metaphorical words. This includes the classic “Models and Metaphor,” by Max Black, who distinguishes between the literal words of the phrase and the metaphorical words. On this view, the two interact in such a way that the meanings of the metaphorical words change. In another view, Donald Davidson takes a radical stance in his “What Metaphors Mean” to assert that the words in a metaphor mean nothing other than their original, literal meaning. Both theories suffer from problems: Black fails to explain how the metaphorical words change in meaning. Davidson, on the other hand, while succeeding in refuting most of the “other meaning” theories, only weakly suggests “use” of metaphor to explain its power. In this paper, I will clarify the two respective theories and attempt to reconcile or fuse them. We will find that Black looks to the language itself and finds a shift in meaning, while Davidson asserts that meaning stays literal, and we must instead look at what occurs between the speaker and hearer. An examination of Davidson’s later theory of interpretation applied to Black’s theory of metaphor will clarify Davidson’s ‘use’ as well as allow for literal meaning to stay in metaphor

A representationalist reading of Kantian intuitions

There are passages in Kant’s writings according to which empirical intuitions have to be (a) singular, (b) object-dependent, and (c) immediate. It has also been argued that empirical intuitions (d) are not truth-apt, and (e) need to provide the subject with a proof of the possibility of the cognized object. Having relied on one or another of the a-e constraints, the naïve realist readers of Kant have argued that it is not possible for empirical intuitions to be representations. Instead they have argued for a relationalist reading of empirical intuitions in terms of an acquaintance relation between the subject and the intuited object. For the sake of argument, I will grant the naïve realist reader of Kant that empirical intuitions should satisfy all the a-e constraints. Nevertheless, by incorporating these constraints, one by one, into a representationalist theory of empirical intuitions, I will show that not only doesn’t a naïve realist reading of empirical intuitions follow, but also that the naïve realist has hastily overlooked a range of perfectly representationalist readings of intuitions available to Kant and his representationalist allies. On the positive side, I will argue that there is an extra constraint on intuitions—i.e., that givenness does not require presence to consciousness—that directly goes against any naïve realist account of intuitions

The relationship between job satisfaction and teacher retention among Iranian high school teachers

The purpose of this study was to examine high school teachers’ job satisfaction and its impact on teacher retention in the independent school. The present study was done among the high school students in Shahre-Ray, Iran.87 full-time English teachers who were distributed throughout the lower, middle, and upper school divisions were selected. Participants included 69 females and 18 males representing. Osborne & Reiman’s (2005) teacher retention questionnaire and Smith’s job satisfaction questionnaire (1969) were used to measure the variables. Data from the survey instrument incorporated the use of the Likert Scale. The result of analysis confirmed the significant correlation between the subscales of two variables. The findings of this study can be used by language teachers and researchers in the field

"Survival of the fittest human- elephant conflict and its impact on the sustainable development

The history o f human race has the record of living in the forest where man has to manage his livelihood with the sources available in the forest. First he was hunting animals and birds for meals and fruits for his survival. In that forest environment he has to face the threats of certain animals of which elephant is one. Beside elephant has been the asset of man because of its tusk with which h is very proud of its existence. Normally elephant keep this tusk bright and sharp. Apart from this man is also very fond of elephant because with its help he could remove many kinds of obstacles such as defending threats o f other people or animals and to transport his goods and materials. Then in the course of time, man has come to make use of the assistance of the elephant for fighting against enemies. This was kept by the kings for defending enemies. The lords also had the habits of keeping elephants for pleasure. There were selected people who used to train the elephants for the use of man. In this way elephant was regarded and respected as an asset Even now elephant are the main assets o f Sri Lanka and the government also very much interested in preserving and conserving the elephant spices

The relationship between job satisfaction and teacher retention among Iranian high school teachers

The purpose of this study was to examine high school teachers’ job satisfaction and its impact on teacher retention in the independent school. The present study was done among the high school students in Shahre-Ray, Iran.87 full-time English teachers who were distributed throughout the lower, middle, and upper school divisions were selected. Participants included 69 females and 18 males representing. Osborne & Reiman’s (2005) teacher retention questionnaire and Smith’s job satisfaction questionnaire (1969) were used to measure the variables. Data from the survey instrument incorporated the use of the Likert Scale. The result of analysis confirmed the significant correlation between the subscales of two variables. The findings of this study can be used by language teachers and researchers in the field

Why do we need perceptual content?

Most representationalists argue that perceptual experience has to be representational because phenomenal looks are, by themselves, representational. Charles Travis argues that looks cannot represent. I argue that perceptual experience has to be representational due to the way the visual system works

Design of Power Switched-Capacitor Converters and Their Performance Analysis in a Soft-Charging Operation

Switched-capacitor (SC) converters have gained more interest due to their high power density and appropriateness for small circuit integration. Building a SC DC-to-DC converter with only capacitors and switches is the main reason to seek a higher power density achievement. However, the SC converters suffer dominant losses related to their capacitors and switches. These losses can be determined and optimized by calculating the converter\u27s output impedance in its two asymptotic limits. We proposed a high voltage gain and a very low output impedance power switched-capacitor converter (PSC) with a lower number of components compared to other step-up switched-capacitor topologies. The high output efficiency and the higher power density are two fundamental aspects of the PSC converter. We can eliminate the current transient by applying the soft-charging technique that results a higher power density and a higher efficiency in PSC. The soft-charging operation is more preferable to the soft-switching technique (resonant operation) since it does not require any auxiliary components. Furthermore, soft-charging helps to resize capacitors and reduce the switching frequency of the PSC converter. Furthermore, a split-phase control design is proposed to achieve the complete soft-charging operation in a PSC. The control diagram was designed for a 1-to-4 PSC (two levels of the PSC) which controls eight switches to exhibit eight modes of operation. The complete soft-charging accomplishes a 96% efficiency due to the lower output impedance and the dead time switching. LT-spice software has been used to verify the proposed control, and the results were compared with hard-charging and incomplete soft-charging operations. In this research, we also proposed a two-level power switched-capacitor boost converter (PSC-boost) for a high voltage gain application by integrating a PSC converter and a conventional boost converter. The PSC switched-capacitors and the conventional boost converter are respectively cascaded as a primary and a secondary side of the proposed converter. Without alerting of the secondary side (conventional boost), the conversion ratio can be increased by adding more switched-capacitors cells. The proposed converter similarly acts as an MBC; however, it can maintain the rated voltage gain at a higher duty cycle. Unlike the MBC converter, the simulated voltage gain is closer to the calculated voltage gain for PSC-boost converter. In addition to the switched-capacitors insertion, a switched inductor model is used instead of the single inductor in the traditional boost converter. Five switches, five capacitors, seven diodes, and three inductors are used to build a PSC-boost switched-inductor converter. The PSC-boost converter accomplishes 94% efficiency which a higher rated power

Solution of Coupled Thermoelasticity Problem in Rotating Disks

The main purpose of this dissertation is to study coupled thermoelastic behaviors in disks subjected to thermal shock loads based on the generalized and classic theories of coupled thermoelasticity. To this end, this research has been carried out in two stages. In the first stage, thermoelasticity problems in an axisymmetric rotating disk with constant thickness made of a homogeneous isotropic material are analytically solved and closed-form formulations are presented for temperature and displacement fields. Since, the analytical solution is not always feasible, the finite element (FE) method can be employed for more sophisticated coupled thermoelasticity problems. Accordingly, in the second stage of the research, a novel refined 1D finite element approach with 3D-like accuracies are developed for theories of coupled thermoelasticity. Then, the developed FE models are applied for a 3D solution of the dynamic generalized coupled thermoelasticity problem in disks. Use of the reduced models with low computational costs may be of interest in a laborious time history analysis of the dynamic problems. The obtained analytical and numerical solutions are in good agreement with the results available in the literature. It is further shown that the proposed analytical and FE methods are quite efficient with very high rate of convergence