Effective Representation Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Effective Representation. Here they are! All 100 of them:

PowerPoint is like being trapped in the style of early Egyptian flatland cartoons rather than using the more effective tools of Renaissance visual representation.
Edward R. Tufte (Beautiful Evidence)
The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Volume I)
The wise person knows it is fruitless to project hopes and fears on the future. This only leads to forming melodramatic representations in your mind and wasting time.
Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had left them to the last, because they required the most careful working. I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids lustrous and large. "Good! but not quite the thing," I thought, as I surveyed the effect: "they want more force and spirit;" and I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly--a happy touch or two secured success. There, I had a friend's face under my gaze; and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content. Is that a portrait of some one you know?" asked Eliza, who had approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head, and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much, but she called that 'an ugly man.
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
A timeline is a linear representation of cause and effect, changing one event alters all that follow.
John W Lord
The ripple effect. You throw a pebble into the water and it creates ripples. Your action was to throw the pebble—the representation of your choice. That’s all that you can control. But not the ripples—those are the consequences of your choice. And that you cannot control.
Michele Bardsley
What a painter inquires into is not the nature of the physical world but the nature of our reactions to it. He is not concerned with causes but with the mechanism of certain effects. His is a psychological problem-that of conjuring up a convincing image despite the fact that not one individual shade corresponds to what we call "reality." In order to understand this puzzle-as far as we can claim to understand it as yet-science had to explore the capacity of our minds to register relationships rather than individual elements.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
The letter is only an aid to philosophical communication, the actual essence of which consists in arousing a particular train of thought. Someone speaking thinks and produces—someone listening reflects—and reproduces. Words are a deceptive medium for what is already though—unreliable vehicles of a particular, specific stimulus. The true teacher is a guide. If the pupil genuinely desires truth it requires only a hint to show him how to find what he is seeking. Accordingly the representation of philosophy consists purely of themes—of initial propositions—principles. It exists only for autonomous lovers of truth. The analytical exposition of the theme is only for those who are sluggish or unpracticed. The latter must learn thereby how to fly and keep themselves moving in a particular direction. Attentiveness is a centripetal force. The effective relation between that which is directed and the object of direction begins with the given direction. If we hold fast to this direction we are apodictically certain of reaching the goal that has been set. True collaboration in philosophy then is a common movement toward a beloved world—whereby we relieve each other in the most advanced outpost, a movement that demands the greatest effort against the resisting element within which we are flying.
Novalis (Philosophical Writings)
The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research “childhood.” There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises “adolescence.” The feeling haunts people all their lives. Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do with the pieces? Some people hunker down atop the local pile of ruins and make do, Bedouin tending their goats in the shade of shattered giants. Others set about breaking what remains of the world into bits ever smaller and more jagged, kicking through the rubble like kids running through piles of leaves. And some people, passing among the scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle, start to pick up a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back together again. Two difficulties with this latter scheme at once present themselves. First of all, we have only ever glimpsed, as if through half-closed lids, the picture on the lid of the jigsaw puzzle box. Second, no matter how diligent we have been about picking up pieces along the way, we will never have anywhere near enough of them to finish the job. The most we can hope to accomplish with our handful of salvaged bits—the bittersweet harvest of observation and experience—is to build a little world of our own. A scale model of that mysterious original, unbroken, half—remembered. Of course the worlds we build out of our store of fragments can be only approximations, partial and inaccurate. As representations of the vanished whole that haunts us, they must be accounted failures. And yet in that very failure, in their gaps and inaccuracies, they may yet be faithful maps, accurate scale models, of this beautiful and broken world. We call these scale models “works of art.
Michael Chabon (The Wes Anderson Collection)
Take the issue of women being interrupted. An analysis of fifteen years of Supreme Court oral arguments found that ‘men interrupt more than women, and they particularly interrupt women more than they interrupt other men’.73 This goes for male lawyers (female lawyers weren’t found to interrupt at all) as well as judges, even though lawyers are meant to stop speaking when a justice starts speaking. And, as in the political sphere, the problem seems to have got worse as female representation on the bench has increased. An individualist solution might be to tell women to interrupt right back74 – perhaps working on their ‘polite interrupting’75 skills. But there’s a problem with this apparently gender-neutral approach, which is that it isn’t gender-neutral in effect: interrupting simply isn’t viewed the same way when women do it. In June 2017 US Senator Kamala Harris was asking an evasive Attorney General Jeff Sessions some tough questions. When he prevaricated once too often, she interrupted him and pressed him to answer. She was then in turn (on two separate occasions) interrupted and admonished by Senator John McCain for her questioning style.76 He did not do the same to her colleague Senator Rob Wyden, who subjected Sessions to similarly dogged questioning, and it was only Harris who was later dubbed ‘hysterical’.
Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
What I want you to understand is that the words that our schools, our government, our media, our colleagues, and our family use have a profound effect on how you think and feel about life. The words that you learn, and then use to speak and think with, are molding your reality. Your vernacular creates your visual representation of the world, and the language you think with essentially creates your experienced reality.
Ricardo Cruz Leal (Raw, Naked & Fearless: 11 Principles for Living Your Greatest Life)
Now it is very striking, and well worth investigating, that such trifling, nay, apparently childish, means as metre and rhyme produce so powerful an effect. I explain it to myself in the following manner: That which is given directly to the sense of hearing, thus the mere sound of the words, receives from rhythm and rhyme a certain completeness and significance in itself for it thereby becomes a kind of music; therefore it seems now to exist for its own sake, and no longer as a mere means, mere signs of something signified, the sense of the words. To please the ear with its sound seems to be its whole end, and therefore with this everything seems to be attained and all claims satisfied. But that it further contains a meaning, expresses a thought, presents itself now as an unexpected addition, like words to music - as an unexpected present which agreeably surprises us - and therefore, since we made no demands of this kind, very easily satisfies us; and if indeed this thought is such that, in itself, thus said in prose, it would be significant, then we are enchanted.
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Volume II)
Music is as immediate an objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself is, indeed as the Ideas are, the multiplied phenomenon of which constitutes the world of individual things. Therefore music is by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of the Ideas, but a copy of the will itself, the objectivity of which are the Ideas. For this reason the effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the thing itself.
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Volume I)
There is one type of scientific illustration in which this effect of scale on impression is acknowledged officially, as it were. Geographers who draw sections of mountain ranges will exaggerate the relation of height to width according to a stated proportion. They have found that a true rendering of vertical relationship looks false. Our mind refuses to accept the fact that the distance of 28,000 feet to which Mount Everest soars from sea level is no more than the distance of just over 5 miles which a car traverses in a matter of minutes.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
If you teach a student facts, concepts, and rules, those things go into long-term memory as individual pieces, and if a student then wishes to do something with them—use them to solve a problem, reason with them to answer a question, or organize and analyze them to come up with a theme or a hypothesis—the limitations of attention and short-term memory kick in. The student must keep all of these different, unconnected pieces in mind while working with them toward a solution. However, if this information is assimilated as part of building mental representations aimed at doing something, the individual pieces become part of an interconnected pattern that provides context and meaning to the information, making it easier to work with. As we saw in chapter 3, you don’t build mental representations by thinking about something; you build them by trying to do something, failing, revising, and trying again, over and over. When you’re done, not only have you developed an effective mental representation for the skill you were developing, but you have also absorbed a great deal of information connected with that skill.
K. Anders Ericsson (Peak: Unleashing Your Inner Champion Through Revolutionary Methods for Skill Acquisition and Performance Enhancement in Work, Sports, and Life)
What’s so interesting here is that through the course of development, these secure children increasingly “internalize” their parents’ emotional availability and responsiveness and come to hold the same constant or dependable loving feeling toward themselves that their parents originally held toward them (certainly, a beautiful developmental process to watch unfold in securely attached children). Said differently, cognitive development increasingly allows securely attached children to internally hold a mental representation of their emotionally responsive parents when the attachment figures are away and they can increasingly soothe themselves as their caregivers have done—facilitating the child’s own capacity for affect regulation and independent functioning. Thus, as these children grow older and mature cognitively and emotionally, they become increasingly able to soothe themselves when distressed, function for increasingly longer periods without emotional refueling, and effectively elicit appropriate help or support when necessary. In this way, object constancy and more independent functioning develops—facilitating their ability to comfort themselves and become the source of their own self-esteem and secure identity as capable, love-worthy persons. Furthermore, they possess the cognitive schemas or internal working models necessary to establish new relationships with others that hold this same affirming affective valence.
Edward Teyber (Interpersonal Process in Therapy: An Integrative Model)
I'd forgotten, I said to him, how relieving the anonymity of city life could be. People weren't forever having to explain themselves here: a city was a decipherable interface, a sort of lexicon of human behaviour that did half the work of decoding the mystery of self, so you could effectively communicate through a kind of shorthand. Where I had lived before, in the countryside, each individual was the unique, often illegible representation of their own acts and aims. So much got lost or mistaken, I said, in the process of self-explanation; so many words failed to maintain an integral meaning.
Rachel Cusk (Transit)
Every day is a micro-representation of our entire lives, it starts with us having a lot of energy and world of possibilities ahead, but if we are not careful, we can end it feeling exhausted, frustrated and leaving many things undone as time is over... Thus, let's prioritize on what really matters in life every day!
Rodolfo Peon
In a rule-based society, we often choose efficiency over value, but, while rules-based governance systems may often serve well the values of fairness and representation, their seeming efficiency hides a deep and important flaw: We often rely on rules when they are not, in fact, the most efficient or effective solution to getting the result that we desire.
Dov Seidman (How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything...in Business (and in Life))
The fact is that the buildings here were not made to speak to the world as we know it, but to the citizens of the USSR. Visible from afar and unfailingly spectacular, they are effectively monuments, ideological markers endowed with an almost mystical aura by their positioning in space and expressive power. "By its incongruity, by its inhuman stature" writes the philosopher Jacques Derrida, "the monumental dimension serves to emphasize the non-representable nature of the very concept that it evokes." This concept, whether in Grodno, Kiev or Dushanbe, is might. The might of power. A power that would soon become illusory and whose crumbling is indeed manifested by the growing stylistic diversity of this architecture.
Frédéric Chaubin
We find the same situation in the economy. On the one hand, the battered remnants of production and the real economy; on the other, the circulation of gigantic amounts of virtual capital. But the two are so disconnected that the misfortunes which beset that capital – stock market crashes and other financial debacles – do not bring about the collapse of real economies any more. It is the same in the political sphere: scandals, corruption and the general decline in standards have no decisive effects in a split society, where responsibility (the possibility that the two parties may respond to each other) is no longer part of the game. This paradoxical situation is in a sense beneficial: it protects civil society (what remains of it) from the vicissitudes of the political sphere, just as it protects the economy (what remains of it) from the random fluctuations of the Stock Exchange and international finance. The immunity of the one creates a reciprocal immunity in the other – a mirror indifference. Better: real society is losing interest in the political class, while nonetheless availing itself of the spectacle. At last, then, the media have some use, and the ‘society of the spectacle’ assumes its full meaning in this fierce irony: the masses availing themselves of the spectacle of the dysfunctionings of representation through the random twists in the story of the political class’s corruption. All that remains now to the politicians is the obligation to sacrifice themselves to provide the requisite spectacle for the entertainment of the people.
Jean Baudrillard (Screened Out)
The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research. (Einstein 1949, 683–684)
Albert Einstein (Autobiographical Notes)
Entertainment in its broadest sense- popular ballads, vaudeville, films, sculptures, plays, paintings, pornography, pulp novels-- has not only been a primary mode of expression of LGBT identity, but one of the most effective means of social change. Ironically, the enormous political power of these forms was often understood by the people who wanted to ban them, not by the people who were simply enjoying them.
Michael Bronski (A Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning American History))
The effect, to be sure, is precisely that which they describe, and is, furthermore, the actual source of the conception of epic which they themselves hold, and with them all writers decisively influenced by classical antiquity. But the true cause of the impression of “retardation” appears to me to lie elsewhere—namely, in the need of the Homeric style to leave nothing which it mentions half in darkness and unexternalized.
Erich Auerbach (Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature)
The physical image presentation aims at the subject. The presentation of the image itself as the presentation of the appearing image-representant is an entirely different experience. Here, too, it is possible that the consciousness of imaging can slip away entirely, in which case an ordinary perceptual presentation would result. Preventing this consciousness of imaging from arising from the start in a purely intuitive manner is the effect produced by images simulating the look of reality, images of the sort found in the wax museum, and the like. Although in such cases we have a conceptual knowledge of the fact that the appearances are merely image appearances, in the intuitive experience itself the re-presentative moment, which is otherwise intimately mingled with the appearances, is absent. But this moment is decisive for intuitive image presentation. We have genuine perceptual presentations in those cases, accompanied by the thought that their objects are mere images. The appearance itself, however, presents itself as the appearance of a present object and not as an image. Indeed, in naïvely contemplating it, the appearance forces us to make the intuitive perceptual judgment. In doing this, it deceives us. In truth, there is perhaps another (nonappearing) object, standing to the appearing object in the relation of original to image. We know all of this, and yet the illusion continues to exist, since the appearance possesses the characteristic of normal perceptual presentation so completely that it will not stand being degraded into a mere representant. The accompanying judgment that it is a mere image just does not impress the image-characteristic on the appearance itself.
Edmund Husserl (Phantasy, Image Consciousness and Memory, 1898-1925)
If ensuring the survival of the body proper is what the brain first evolved for, then, when minded brains first appeared, they began by minding the body. And to ensure body survival as effectively as possible, nature, I suggest, stumbled on a highly effective solution: representing the outside world in terms of the modifications it causes in the body proper, that is, representing the environment by modifying the primordial representations of the body proper whenever an interaction between organism and environment takes place.
António Damásio (Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain)
Without taking into account the ways in which money has motivated oppression, we are missing an essential layer as to why so many powerful and influential entities, business owners, entrepreneurs, and moguls refuse to take on social justice: it’s just not cost effective to do so. And this legacy has continued and even adapted as some businesses have feigned a more populist message regarding representation of women. Regardless of how many times they can say “feminist!” in a product or ad, it’s the allegiance to money that has hindered progress.
Koa Beck
To know causality is the sole function of the understanding, its only power, and it is a great power embracing much, manifold in its application, and yet unmistakable in its identity throughout all its manifestations. Conversely, all causality, hence all matter, and consequently the whole of reality, is only for the understanding, through the understanding, in the understanding. The first, simplest, ever-present manifestation of understanding is perception of the actual world. This is in every way knowledge of the cause from the effect, and therefore all perception is intellectual.
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Volume I)
However, the typical representation of an investor is someone who mostly looks at prices when planning his or her actions; price-only investors tend to underperform value investors. Effective investors, on the other hand, think like businesspeople, allocating capital within the firm to projects with high expected returns. Allocators—individuals making calculated capital allocations to projects or firms—play a vital role in growing the economy for us all by directing resources to the most effective value-creating organizations. We would all be better off if more investors thought like allocators.
Nick Gogerty (The Nature of Value: How to Invest in the Adaptive Economy (Columbia Business School Publishing))
Exaggerated Emotional Coherence (Halo Effect) If you like the president’s politics, you probably like his voice and his appearance as well. The tendency to like (or dislike) everything about a person—including things you have not observed—is known as the halo effect. The term has been in use in psychology for a century, but it has not come into wide use in everyday language. This is a pity, because the halo effect is a good name for a common bias that plays a large role in shaping our view of people and situations. It is one of the ways the representation of the world that System 1 generates is simpler and more coherent than the real thing. You meet a woman named Joan at a party and find her personable and easy to talk to. Now her name comes up as someone who could be asked to contribute to a charity. What do you know about Joan’s generosity? The correct answer is that you know virtually nothing, because there is little reason to believe that people who are agreeable in social situations are also generous contributors to charities. But you like Joan and you will retrieve the feeling of liking her when you think of her. You also like generosity and generous people. By association, you are now predisposed to believe that Joan is generous. And now that you believe she is generous, you probably like Joan even better than you did earlier, because you have added generosity to her pleasant attributes.
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
The California State Department of Education has issued guidelines called “Standards for Evaluation of Instructional Materials with Respect to Social Content.” According to Education Code section 60040(a) and 60044(a), “Whenever an instructional material presents developments in history or current events, or achievements in art, science, or any other field, the contributions of women and men should be represented in approximately equal number.“ In effect, this law demands that the historian be more attentive to the demands of “equal representation” than to the historical facts. Needless to say, histories and social studies presented in this “fair” but factually skewed manner constitute an unworthy and dishonest approach to learning.
Christina Hoff Sommers (Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women)
All our ideas are representations of objects that strike us: what is to represent to us the idea of a god, who is plainly an idea without object? Is not such an idea, you will add when talking to them, quite as impossible as effects without causes? Is an idea without prototype anything other than an hallucination? Some scholars, you will continue, assure us that the idea of a god is innate, and that mortals already have this idea when in their mothers' bellies. But, you will remark, that is false; every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses; whence it follows that religious principles bear upon nothing whatever and are not in the slightest innate. How, you will go on, how have they been able to convince rational beings that the thing most difficult to understand is the most vital to them? It is that mankind has been terrorized; it is that when one is afraid one ceases to reason; it is, above all, that we have been advised to mistrust reason and defy it; and that, when the brain is disturbed, one believes anything and examines nothing. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fear—those are the twin bases of every religion. Man's uncertainty with respect to his god is, precisely, the cause for his attachment to his religion. Man's fear in dark places is as much physical as moral; fear becomes habitual in him, and is changed into need: he would believe he were lacking something even were he to have nothing more to hope for or dread.
Marquis de Sade (Philosophy in the Boudoir)
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce, through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect. But Mr. Burke should recollect that he is writing history, and not plays, and that his readers will expect truth, and not the spouting rant of high-toned exclamation. When we see a man dramatically lamenting in a publication intended to be believed that "The age of chivalry is gone! that The glory of Europe is extinguished for ever! that The unbought grace of life (if anyone knows what it is), the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone!
Thomas Paine (Rights of Man)
In any events, however seemingly dire, there is nothing to prevent us from searching for its hidden opportunity. It is a failure of the imagination not to do so. But to seek out the opportunity in situations requires a great deal of courage, for most people around you will persist in interpreting events in the grossest terms: success or failure, good or bad, right or wrong. These simplistic, polarized categories obscure more creative—and useful—interpretations of events that are far more advantageous and interesting! The wise person knows it is fruitless to project hopes and fears on the future. This only leads to forming melodramatic representations in your mind and wasting time. At the same time, one shouldn’t passively acquiesce to the future and what it holds. Simply doing nothing does not avoid risk, but heightens it.
Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
Vitality, understood both somatically and mentally, is itself the medium that contains a gradient between more and less. It therefore contains the vertical component that guides ascents within itself, and has no need of additional external or metaphysical attractors. That God is supposedly dead is irrelevant in this context. With or without God, each person will only get as far as their form carries them. Naturally 'God', during the time of his effective cultural representation, was the most convincing attractor for those forms of life and practice which strove 'towards Him' - and this towards-Him was identical to 'upwards'. Nietzsche's concern to preserve vertical tension after the death of God proves how seriously he took his task as the 'last metaphysician', without overlooking the comical aspect of his mission. He had found his great role as a witness to the vertical dimension without God.
Peter Sloterdijk (Du mußt dein Leben ändern)
[T]his world of humanity is the kingdom of chance and error. These rule in it without mercy in great things as in small; and along with them folly and wickedness also wield the scourge. Hence arises the fact that everything better struggles through only with difficulty; what is noble and wise very rarely makes its appearance, becomes effective, or meets with a hearing, but the absurd and perverse in the realm of thought, the dull and tasteless in the sphere of art, and the wicked and fraudulent in the sphere of action, really assert a supremacy that is disturbed only by brief interruptions. On the other hand, everything excellent or admirable is always only an exception, one case in millions; therefore, if it has shown itself in a lasting work, this subsequently exists in isolation, after it has outlived the rancour of its contemporaries. It is preserved like a meteorite, sprung from an order of things different from that which prevails here.
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Volume I)
Now everyone knows that to try to say something in the mainstream Western media that is critical of U.S. policy or Israel is extremely difficult; conversely, to say things that are hostile to the Arabs as a people and culture, or Islam as a religion, is laughably easy. For in effect there is a cultural war between spokespersons for the West and those of the Muslim and Arab world. In so inflamed a situation, the hardest thing to do as an intellectual is to be critical, to refuse to adopt a rhetorical style that is the verbal equivalent of carpet-bombing, and to focus instead on those issues like U.S. support for unpopular client re­gimes, which for a person writing in the U.S. are somewhat more likely to be affected by critical discussion. Of course, on the other hand, there is a virtual cer­tainty of getting an audience if as an Arab intellectual you passionately, even slavishly support U.S. policy, you attack its critics, and if they happen to be Arabs, you invent evi­dence to show their villainy; if they are American you confect stories and situations that prove their duplicity; you spin out stories concerning Arabs and Muslims that have the effect of defaming their tradition, defacing their history, accentuating their weaknesses, of which of course there are plenty. Above all, you attack the officially ap­ proved enemies-Saddam Hussein, Baathism, Arab na­tionalism, the Palestinian movement, Arab views of Israel. And of course this earns you the expected accolades: you are characterized as courageous, you are outspoken and passionate, and on and on. The new god of course is the West. Arabs, you say, should try to be more like the West, should regard the West as a source and a reference point. · Gone is the history of what the West actually did. Gone are the Gulf War's destructive results. We Arabs and Mus­lims are the sick ones, our problems are our own, totally self-inflicted. A number of things stand out about these kinds of performance. In the first place, there is no universalism here at all. Because you serve a god uncritically, all the devils are always on the other side: this was as true when you were a Trotskyist as it i's now when you are a recanting former Trotskyist. You do not think of politics in terms of interrelationships or of common histories such as, for instance, the long and complicated dynamic that has bound the Arabs and Muslims to the West and vice versa. Real intellectual analysis forbids calling one side innocent, the other evil. Indeed the notion of a side is, where cultures are at issue, highly problematic, since most cultures aren't watertight little packages, all homogenous, and all either good or evil. But if your eye is on your patron, you cannot think as an intellectual, but only as a disciple or acolyte. In the back of your mind there is the thought that you must please and not displease.
Edward W. Said (Representations of the Intellectual)
The insult, however, assumes its specific proportion in time. To be called a name is one of the first forms of linguistic injury that one learns. But not all name-calling is injurious. Being called a name is also one of the conditions by which a subject is constituted in language; indeed, it is one of the examples Althusser supplies for an understanding of “interpellation.”1 Does the power of language to injure follow from its interpellative power? And how, if at all, does linguistic agency emerge from this scene of enabling vulnerability? The problem of injurious speech raises the question of which words wound, which representations offend, suggesting that we focus on those parts of language that are uttered, utterable, and explicit. And yet, linguistic injury appears to be the effect not only of the words by which one is addressed but the mode of address itself, a mode—a disposition or conventional bearing—that interpellates and constitutes a subject.
Judith Butler (Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative)
This book challenges the premises of the growing crusade against law enforcement. In Part One, I rebut the founding myths of the Black Lives Matter movement—including the lie that a pacific Michael Brown was gunned down in cold blood by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. I document the hotly contested “Ferguson effect,” a trend that I first spotted nationally, wherein officers desist from discretionary policing and criminals thus become emboldened. In Part Two, I outline the development of the misguided legal push to force the NYPD to give up its stop, question, and frisk tactic. In Part Three, I analyze criminogenic environments in Chicago and Philadelphia and put to rest the excuse that crime—black crime especially—is the result of poverty and inequality. Finally, in Part Four, I expose the deceptions of the mass-incarceration conceit and show that the disproportionate representation of blacks in prison is actually the result of violence, not racism.
Heather Mac Donald (The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe)
No subject was more perfectly suited to the loosened formal framework and swift juxtaposition of disparate elements that marked his ‘totally chromatic’ style; and it is generally agreed that in this Representation of (mental) Chaos that style found its most impressive outlet. But a representation is not a transcription. The music itself is not chaotic. There is a willed unity of atmosphere, created through a myriad intensely visualized details, which could only be achieved under iron control. Paradoxically, this is probably the direct result of the spontaneity and intensity with which Schoenberg must have been composing in order to have created the work in such a short space of time. The monodrama possesses no clearly defined structure, ranging so freely and juxtaposing lyricism, violence, and Angstridden terror in such uncompromising combination that it attains an effect of continuous high-pressure improvisation; yet it combines this with a powerful sense of continuity and tragic inevitability. That
Malcolm MacDonald (Schoenberg (Composers Across Cultures))
The more intense this hegemonic process of forced integration and integral reality is, the more singularities will rise against it. There will be more "rogue states" - states (like Iran, Palestine) that deliberately exclude themselves from the international community without waiting to be excluded, that exclude themselves from the universal and play their own game, at their own risk and peril. There will be more "rogue events" and more refusal of society by individuals. One could say, inverting Holderlin, that "Where Good grows, there grows the Genie of Evil," ("Da, wo des Gute wiichst, wiichst auch der Genius des Bosen"). This more or less clandestine insurrection of antagonistic forces against the integrist violence of the system is less an effect of the mind, the will or even the desire of human beings than the evil genius of the world itself in refusing globalization. To find the only adversary who will face this allpowerful hegemony, we must look for those beings that are strangers to will, exiled from dialogue and representation, exiled from knowledge and history.
Jean Baudrillard (The Agony of Power)
Kant’s teaching produces a fundamental change in every mind that has grasped it. The change is so great that it may be regarded as an intellectual rebirth. It alone is capable of really removing the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect. Neither Berkeley nor Malebranche is competent to do this, for these men remain too much in the universal, whereas Kant goes into the particular. And this he does in a way which is unexpected either before or after him, and one which has quite a peculiar, one might say immediate, effect on the mind. In consequence of this, the mind undergoes a fundamental undeceiving, and thereafter looks at all things in another light. But only in this way does man become susceptible to the more positive explanations that I am going to give. On the other hand, the man who has not mastered the Kantian philosophy, whatever else he may studied, is, so to speak, in a state of innocence; in other words, he has remained in the grasp of that natural and childlike realism in which we are all born, and which qualifies one for every possible thing except philosophy.
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Volume I)
In cognitive science, the tendency to give different responses to problems that have surface dissimilarities but that are really formally identical is termed a framing effect. Framing effects are very basic violations of the strictures of rational choice. In the technical literature of decision theory, the stricture that is being violated is called descriptive invariance-the stricture that choices should not change as the result of trivial rewordings of a problem.2 Subjects in framing experiments, when shown differing versions of the same choice situation, overwhelmingly agree that the differences in the problem representations should not affect their choice. If choices flip-flop based on problem characteristics that the subjects themselves view as irrelevant-then the subjects can be said to have no stable, well-ordered preferences at all. If a person's preference reverses based on inconsequential aspects of how the problem is phrased, the person cannot be described as maximizing expected utility. Thus, such failures of descriptive invariance have quite serious implications for our view of whether or not people are rational.
Keith E. Stanovich (What Intelligence Tests Miss)
Now to picture the mechanism of this process of construction and not merely its progressive extension, we must note that each level is characterized by a new co-ordination of the elements provided—already existing in the form of wholes, though of a lower order—by the processes of the previous level. The sensori-motor schema, the characteristic unit of the system of pre-symbolic intelligence, thus assimilates perceptual schemata and the schemata relating to learned action (these schemata of perception and habit being of the same lower order, since the first concerns the present state of the object and the second only elementary changes of state). The symbolic schema assimilates sensori-motor schemata with differentiation of function; imitative accommodation is extended into imaginal significants and assimilation determines the significates. The intuitive schema is both a co-ordination and a differentiation of imaginal schemata. The concrete operational schema is a grouping of intuitive schemata, which are promoted, by the very fact of their being grouped, to the rank of reversible operations. Finally, the formal schema is simply a system of second-degree operations, and therefore a grouping operating on concrete groupings. Each of the transitions from one of these levels to the next is therefore characterized both by a new co-ordination and by a differentiation of the systems constituting the unit of the preceding level. Now these successive differentiations, in their turn, throw light on the undifferentiated nature of the initial mechanisms, and thus we can conceive both of a genealogy of operational groupings as progressive differentiations, and of an explanation of the pre-operational levels as a failure to differentiate the processes involved. Thus, as we have seen (Chap. 4), sensori-motor intelligence arrives at a kind of empirical grouping of bodily movements, characterized psychologically by actions capable of reversals and detours, and geometrically by what Poincaré called the (experimental) group of displacement. But it goes without saying that, at this elementary level, which precedes all thought, we cannot regard this grouping as an operational system, since it is a system of responses actually effected; the fact is therefore that it is undifferentiated, the displacements in question being at the same time and in every case responses directed towards a goal serving some practical purpose. We might therefore say that at this level spatio-temporal, logico-arithmetical and practical (means and ends) groupings form a global whole and that, in the absence of differentiation, this complex system is incapable of constituting an operational mechanism. At the end of this period and at the beginning of representative thought, on the other hand, the appearance of the symbol makes possible the first form of differentiation: practical groupings (means and ends) on the one hand, and representation on the other. But this latter is still undifferentiated, logico-arithmetical operations not being distinguished from spatio-temporal operations. In fact, at the intuitive level there are no genuine classes or relations because both are still spatial collections as well as spatio-temporal relationships: hence their intuitive and pre-operational character. At 7–8 years, however, the appearance of operational groupings is characterized precisely by a clear differentiation between logico-arithmetical operations that have become independent (classes, relations and despatialized numbers) and spatio-temporal or infra-logical operations. Lastly, the level of formal operations marks a final differentiation between operations tied to real action and hypothetico-deductive operations concerning pure implications from propositions stated as postulates.
Jean Piaget (The Psychology of Intelligence)
All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love, principally when it is represented as very chaste and virtuous. For the more innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they are likely to be touched by it. Its violence pleases our self-love, which immediately forms a desire to produce the same effects which are seen so well represented; and, at the same time, we make ourselves a conscience founded on the propriety of the feelings which we see there, by which the fear of pure souls is removed, since they imagine that it cannot hurt their purity to love with a love which seems to them so reasonable. So we depart from the theatre with our heart so filled with all the beauty and tenderness of love, the soul and the mind so persuaded of its innocence, that we are quite ready to receive its first impressions, or rather to seek an opportunity of awakening them in the heart of another, in order that we may receive the same pleasures and the same sacrifices which we have seen so well represented in the theatre.
Blaise Pascal (Pascal's Pensées)
Strange to consider that these two linguistic operations, metaphor and analogy, so often linked together in rhetoric and narratology, and considered to be variants of the same operation, are actually hugely different from each other, to the point where one is futile and stupid, the other penetrating and useful. Can this not have been noticed before? Do they really think x is like y is equivalent to x is to y as a is to b? Can they be that fuzzy, that sloppy? Yes. Of course. Evidence copious. Reconsider data at hand in light of this; it fits the patterns. Because fuzzy is to language as sloppy is to action. Or maybe both these rhetorical operations, and all linguistic operations, all language—all mentation—simply reveal an insoluble underlying problem, which is the fuzzy, indeterminate nature of any symbolic representation, and in particular the utter inadequacy of any narrative algorithm yet invented and applied. Some actions, some feelings, one might venture, simply do not have ways to be effectively compressed, discretized, quantified, operationalized, proceduralized, and gamified; and that lack, that absence, makes them unalgorithmic. In short, there are some actions and feelings that are always, and by definition, beyond algorithm. And therefore inexpressible. Some
Kim Stanley Robinson (Aurora)
Perhaps even more fundamentally, it is possible to argue that there is no “reality” that is not always already a form of fantasy: that fantasy is all we have got. In other words, the very distinction between “reality” and “fantasy” is in many ways an artificial one, reminiscent of an Enlightenment worldview—one that believed in the power of the rational mind to tell fact from fiction—that has been seriously undermined in recent decades of postmodern theorizing. That is, the belief that we could ever relate to the world objectively, as it “really is,” has itself been discredited as a fantasy that occludes the recognition that the ways we perceive and interpret the world always necessarily reflect the value systems within which we operate. In effect, while the Enlightenment worldview distinguishes between “reality” and our more or less successful efforts to represent it, contemporary theorists recognize—as Nietzsche already did—that our very attempts to represent reality invariably shape the form of this reality. By this I do not mean to say that there exists no reality independently of human representations, but merely that we do not possess any immediate or unmediated access to that reality; since we only understand the world around us through the conceptual frameworks, labels, and systems of thought that we impose on this world, there is no way to know what this world might be like outside of our endeavors to comprehend it.
Mari Ruti (A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living (Psychoanalysis and Culture))
All our ideas are representations of objects that strike us: what is to represent to us the idea of a god, who is plainly an idea without object? Is 114 not such an idea, you will add when talking to them, quite as impossible as effects without causes? Is an idea without prototype anything other than an hallucination? Some scholars, you will continue, assure us that the idea of a god is innate, and that mortals already have this idea when in their mothers' bellies. But, you will remark, that is false; every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses; whence it follows that religious principles bear upon nothing whatever and are not in the slightest innate. How, you will go on, how have they been able to convince rational beings that the thing most difficult to understand is the most vital to them? It is that mankind has been terrorized; it is that when one is afraid one ceases to reason; it is, above all, that we have been advised to mistrust reason and defy it; and that, when the brain is disturbed, one believes anything and examines nothing. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fear—those are the twin bases of every religion. Man's uncertainty with respect to his god is, precisely, the cause for his attachment to his religion. Man's fear in dark places is as much physical as moral; fear becomes habitual in him, and is changed into need: he would believe he were lacking something even were he to have nothing more to hope for or dread.
Marquis de Sade (Philosophy in the Boudoir)
For Aristotle the literary plot was analogous to the plot of the world in that both were eductions from the potency of matter. Sartre denies this for the world, and specifically denies, in the passage just referred to, that without potentiality there is no change. He reverts to the Megaric view of the matter, which Aristotle took such trouble to correct. But this is not our affair. The fact is that even if you believe in a Megaric world there is no such thing as a Megaric novel; not even Paterson. Change without potentiality in a novel is impossible, quite simply; though it is the hopeless aim of the cut-out writers, and the card-shuffle writers. A novel which really implemented this policy would properly be a chaos. No novel can avoid being in some sense what Aristotle calls 'a completed action.' This being so, all novels imitate a world of potentiality, even if this implies a philosophy disclaimed by their authors. They have a fixation on the eidetic imagery of beginning, middle, and end, potency and cause. Novels, then, have beginnings, ends, and potentiality, even if the world has not. In the same way it can be said that whereas there may be, in the world, no such thing as character, since a man is what he does and chooses freely what he does--and in so far as he claims that his acts are determined by psychological or other predisposition he is a fraud, lâche, or salaud--in the novel there can be no just representation of this, for if the man were entirely free he might simply walk out of the story, and if he had no character we should not recognize him. This is true in spite of the claims of the doctrinaire nouveau roman school to have abolished character. And Sartre himself has a powerful commitment to it, though he could not accept the Aristotelian position that it is through character that plot is actualized. In short, novels have characters, even if the world has not. What about time? It is, effectively, a human creation, according to Sartre, and he likes novels because they concern themselves only with human time, a faring forward irreversibly into a virgin future from ecstasy to ecstasy, in his word, from kairos to kairos in mine. The future is a fluid medium in which I try to actualize my potency, though the end is unattainable; the present is simply the pour-soi., 'human consciousness in its flight out of the past into the future.' The past is bundled into the en-soi, and has no relevance. 'What I was is not the foundation of what I am, any more than what I am is the foundation of what I shall be.' Now this is not novel-time. The faring forward is all right, and fits the old desire to know what happens next; but the denial of all causal relation between disparate kairoi, which is after all basic to Sartre's treatment of time, makes form impossible, and it would never occur to us that a book written to such a recipe, a set of discontinuous epiphanies, should be called a novel. Perhaps we could not even read it thus: the making of a novel is partly the achievement of readers as well as writers, and readers would constantly attempt to supply the very connections that the writer's programme suppresses. In all these ways, then, the novel falsifies the philosophy.
Frank Kermode (The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction)
We also find *physics*, in the widest sense of the word, concerned with the explanation of phenomena in the world; but it lies already in the nature of the explanations themselves that they cannot be sufficient. *Physics* is unable to stand on its own feet, but needs a *metaphysics* on which to support itself, whatever fine airs it may assume towards the latter. For it explains phenomena by something still more unknown than are they, namely by laws of nature resting on forces of nature, one of which is also the vital force. Certainly the whole present condition of all things in the world or in nature must necessarily be capable of explanation from purely physical causes. But such an explanation―supposing one actually succeeded so far as to be able to give it―must always just as necessarily be burdened with two essential imperfections (as it were with two sore points, or like Achilles with the vulnerable heel, or the devil with the cloven foot). On account of these imperfections, everything so explained would still really remain unexplained. The first imperfection is that the *beginning* of the chain of causes and effects that explains everything, in other words, of the connected and continuous changes, can positively *never* be reached, but, just like the limits of the world in space and time, recedes incessantly and *in infinitum*. The second imperfection is that all the efficient causes from which everything is explained always rest on something wholly inexplicable, that is, on the original *qualities* of things and the *natural forces* that make their appearance in them. By virtue of such forces they produce a definite effect, e.g., weight, hardness, impact, elasticity, heat, electricity, chemical forces, and so on, and such forces remain in every given explanation like an unknown quantity, not to be eliminated at all, in an otherwise perfectly solved algebraical equation. Accordingly there is not a fragment of clay, however little its value, that is not entirely composed of inexplicable qualities. Therefore these two inevitable defects in every purely physical, i.e., causal, explanation indicate that such an explanation can be only *relatively* true, and that its whole method and nature cannot be the only, the ultimate and hence sufficient one, in other words, cannot be the method that will ever be able to lead to the satisfactory solution of the difficult riddles of things, and to the true understanding of the world and of existence; but that the *physical* explanation, in general and as such, still requires one that is *metaphysical*, which would furnish the key to all its assumptions, but for that very reason would have to follow quite a different path. The first step to this is that we should bring to distinct consciousness and firmly retain the distinction between the two, that is, the difference between *physics* and *metaphysics*. In general this difference rests on the Kantian distinction between *phenomenon* and *thing-in-itself*. Just because Kant declared the thing-in-itself to be absolutely unknowable, there was, according to him, no *metaphysics* at all, but merely immanent knowledge, in other words mere *physics*, which can always speak only of phenomena, and together with this a critique of reason which aspires to metaphysics." ―from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. In Two Volumes, Volume II, pp. 172-173
Arthur Schopenhauer
The moral here is that nature and nurture should not be opposed. Pure learning, in the absence of any innate constraints, simply does not exist. Any learning algorithm contains, in one way or another, a set of assumptions about the domain to be learned. Rather than trying to learn everything from scratch, it is much more effective to rely on prior assumptions that clearly delineate the basic laws of the domain that must be explored, and integrate these laws into the very architecture of the system. The more innate assumptions there are, the faster learning is (provided, of course, that these assumptions are correct!). This is universally true. It would be wrong, for example, to think that the AlphaGo Zero software, which trained itself in Go by playing against itself, started from nothing: its initial representation included, among other things, knowledge of the topography and symmetries of the game, which divided the search space by a factor of eight. Our brain too is molded with assumptions of all kinds. Shortly, we will see that, at birth, babies' brains are already organized and knowledgeable. They know, implicitly, that the world is made of things that move only when pushed, without ever interpenetrating each other (solid objects)—and also that it contains much stranger entities that speak and move by themselves (people). No need to learn these laws: since they are true everywhere humans live, our genome hardwires them into the brain, thus constraining and speeding up learning. Babies do not have to learn everything about the world: their brains are full of innate constraints, and only the specific parameters that vary unpredictably (such as face shape, eye color, tone of voice, and individual tastes of the people around them) remain to be acquired.
Stanislas Dehaene (How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now)
This brings me to an objection to integrated information theory by the quantum physicist Scott Aaronson. His argument has given rise to an instructive online debate that accentuates the counterintuitive nature of some IIT's predictions. Aaronson estimates phi.max for networks called expander graphs, characterized by being both sparsely yet widely connected. Their integrated information will grow indefinitely as the number of elements in these reticulated lattices increases. This is true even of a regular grid of XOR logic gates. IIT predicts that such a structure will have high phi.max. This implies that two-dimensional arrays of logic gates, easy enough to build using silicon circuit technology, have intrinsic causal powers and will feel like something. This is baffling and defies commonsense intuition. Aaronson therefor concludes that any theory with such a bizarre conclusion must be wrong. Tononi counters with a three-pronged argument that doubles down and strengthens the theory's claim. Consider a blank featureless wall. From the extrinsic perspective, it is easily described as empty. Yet the intrinsic point of view of an observer perceiving the wall seethes with an immense number of relations. It has many, many locations and neighbourhood regions surrounding these. These are positioned relative to other points and regions - to the left or right, above or below. Some regions are nearby, while others are far away. There are triangular interactions, and so on. All such relations are immediately present: they do not have to be inferred. Collectively, they constitute an opulent experience, whether it is seen space, heard space, or felt space. All share s similar phenomenology. The extrinsic poverty of empty space hides vast intrinsic wealth. This abundance must be supported by a physical mechanism that determines this phenomenology through its intrinsic causal powers. Enter the grid, such a network of million integrate-or-fire or logic units arrayed on a 1,000 by 1,000 lattice, somewhat comparable to the output of an eye. Each grid elements specifies which of its neighbours were likely ON in the immediate past and which ones will be ON in the immediate future. Collectively, that's one million first-order distinctions. But this is just the beginning, as any two nearby elements sharing inputs and outputs can specify a second-order distinction if their joint cause-effect repertoire cannot be reduced to that of the individual elements. In essence, such a second-order distinction links the probability of past and future states of the element's neighbours. By contrast, no second-order distinction is specified by elements without shared inputs and outputs, since their joint cause-effect repertoire is reducible to that of the individual elements. Potentially, there are a million times a million second-order distinctions. Similarly, subsets of three elements, as long as they share input and output, will specify third-order distinctions linking more of their neighbours together. And on and on. This quickly balloons to staggering numbers of irreducibly higher-order distinctions. The maximally irreducible cause-effect structure associated with such a grid is not so much representing space (for to whom is space presented again, for that is the meaning of re-presentation?) as creating experienced space from an intrinsic perspective.
Christof Koch (The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can't Be Computed)
...the Chöd teachings attributed to Machik Labdrön both rely and innovate on Buddhist representations of mental functionings of a human being, including the onto-epistemological trope of the Universal Base Consciousness [ālaya-vijñāna] and the psycho-ethical trope of Negative Forces as Düd [bdud, māra, demon]. By drawing on and revising these traditional models, Chöd is able to develop effective techniques for "cutting through mind.
Michelle J. Sorensen (Making the Old New Again and Again: Legitimation and Innovation in the Tibetan Buddhist Chöd Tradition)
the Great Man theory (that leaders are born not made, the concept closest to our idea of some people, such as Rick Rescorla, having the ‘right stuff’); trait theory (a derivative of Great Man theory, which posits that leaders are distinguished by the traits or attributes they display, such as integrity and trustworthiness); psychoanalytic theory (Freud’s idea that all social groups are representations of the family); charismatic leadership (in which a figure attracts followers purely on the basis of personality); behavioural theory (that effective leadership results from certain behaviours); situational theory (that the way leadership is executed depends on the situation); contingency theory (an expansion of situational theory, which, in addition to situation, takes account of variables such as the kind of task for which leadership is required and how much power the leader has); transactional versus transformational leadership theory (which contrasts a fairly conventional style of leadership with a more visionary, inspirational style); distributed leadership theory (which eschews a strict hierarchy for a more fluid model, in which leadership roles are shared naturally rather than being formally assigned); and servant leadership theory, in which leadership is carried out purely for the benefit of the group, often at cost to the leader himself.
Mark Van Vugt (Naturally Selected: Why Some People Lead, Why Others Follow, and Why It Matters)
If a man is to be saved it will be through faith, or not at all. But because he is spiritually lifeless (Eph. 2:1-2), he must first be made alive by the power of God's grace before he is able to repent and believe. Perhaps the best way to drive home this point is with an illustration. It comes from the pen of that great British evangelist of the eighteenth century, George Whitefield: "Come, ye dead, Christless, unconverted sinners, come and see the place where they laid the body of the deceased Lazarus; behold him laid out, bound hand and foot with grave-cloaths, locked up and stinking in a dark cave, with a great stone placed on the top of it. View him again and again; go nearer to him; be not afraid; smell him. Ah! How he stinketh. Stop there now, pause a while; and whilst thou art gazing upon the corpse of Lazarus, give me leave to tell thee with great plainness, but greater love, that this dead, bound entombed, stinking carcase, is butd a faith representation of thy poor soul in its natural state: for, whether thou believest or n ot, thy spirit which thou bearest about with thee, sepulchred in flesh and blood, is as literally dead to God, and as truly dead in trespasses and sins, as the body of Lazarus was in the cave. Was he bound hand and foot with grave-cloaths? So art thou bound hand and foot with thy corruptions: and as a stone was laid on the sepulchre, so is there a stone of unbelief upon thy stupid heart. Perhaps thou hast lain in this state, not only four days, but many years, stinking in God's nostrils. And, what is still more effecting thou art as unable to raise thyself out of this loathsome, dead state, to a life of righteousness and true holiness, as ever Lazarus was to raise himself from the cave in which he lay so long. Thou mayest try the power of thy own boasted free-will, and the force and energy of moral persuasion and rational arguments (which, without all doubt, have their proper place in religion); but all thy efforts, exerted with never so much vigour, will prove quite fruitless and abortive, till that same Jesus, who said 'Take away the stone'; and cried, 'Lazarus, come forth' also quicken you
Anonymous
In 1956, two psychologists, Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, would conclude that television’s representation of celebrities was carefully constructed to create an “illusion of intimacy”—to make viewers believe that they actually were developing a relationship with the famous people on TV. Certain techniques particular to variety but also the chat shows produced this effect: recourse to small talk, the use of first names, and close-ups, among others, acted to close the gap between the audience and the guests, engendering the sense in the viewer of being “part of a circle of friends.” The two coined the term “para-social interaction” to describe this “intimacy at a distance.
Tim Wu (The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads)
If my views were generally judged to be paradoxical when they made their appearance, some of them are commonplace today; others bid fair to become so. Let us admit that they could not at first be accepted. It would have meant tearing oneself away from deeply-rooted habits, veritable extensions of nature. All our ways of speaking, thinking, perceiving imply in effect that immobility and immutability are there by right, that movement and change are superadded, like accidents, to things which, by themselves, do not move and, in themselves, do not change. The representation of change is that of qualities or states, which supposedly follow one another in a substance. Each of these qualities, each of these states would be something stable, change being made of their succession: as for substance, whose role is to support the states and qualities which succeed one another, it would be stability itself. Such is the logic immanent in our languages and formulated once and for all by Aristotle: the intelligence has as its essence to judge, and judgment operates by the attribution of a predicate to a subject. The subject, by the sole fact of being named, is defined as invariable; the variation will reside in the diversity of the states that one will affirm concerning it, one after another.
Henri Bergson (The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics)
It now seems clear that a capacity to learn would be an integral feature of the core design of a system intended to attain general intelligence, not something to be tacked on later as an extension or an afterthought. The same holds for the ability to deal effectively with uncertainty and probabilistic information. Some faculty for extracting useful concepts from sensory data and internal states, and for leveraging acquired concepts into flexible combinatorial representations for use in logical and intuitive reasoning, also likely belong among the core design features in a modern AI intended to attain general intelligence.
Nick Bostrom (Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies)
Your committee is satisfied from the proofs submitted ... that there is an established and well defined identity and community of interest between a few leaders of finance ... which has resulted in great and rapidly growing concentration of the control of money and credit in the hands of these few men.... Under our system of issuing and distributing corporate securities the investing public does not buy directly from the corporation. The securities travel from the issuing house through middlemen to the investor. It is only the great banks or bankers with access to the mainsprings of the concentrated resources made up of other people's money, in the banks, trust companies, and life insurance companies, and with control of the machinery for creating markets and distributing securities, who have had the power to underwrite or guarantee the sale of large-scale security issues. The men who through their control over the funds of our railroad and industrial companies are able to direct where such funds shall be kept, and thus to create these great reservoirs of the people's money are the ones who are in a position to tap those reservoirs for the ventures in which they are interested and to prevent their being tapped for purposes which they do not approve.... When we consider, also, in this connection that into these reservoirs of money and credit there flow a large part of the reserves of the banks of the country, that they are also the agents and correspondents of the out-of-town banks in the loaning of their surplus funds in the only public money market of the country, and that a small group of men and their partners and associates have now further strengthened their hold upon the resources of these institutions by acquiring large stock holdings therein, by representation on their boards and through valuable patronage, we begin to realize something of the extent to which this practical and effective domination and control over our greatest financial, railroad and industrial corporations has developed, largely within the past five years, and that it is fraught with peril to the welfare of the country.3 Such was the nature of the wealth and power represented by those six men who gathered in secret that night and travelled in the luxury of Senator Aldrich's private car.
G. Edward Griffin (The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve)
Open-source development breaks this bind, making it far easier for tester and developer to develop a shared representation grounded in the actual source code and to communicate effectively about it.
Eric S. Raymond (The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary)
But this is not all. Even in a lively oral narration, it is not unusual to introduce persons in conversation with each other, and to give a corresponding variety to the tone and the expression. But the gaps, which these conversations leave in the story, the narrator fills up in his own name with a description of the accompanying circumstances, and other particulars. The dramatic poet must renounce all such expedients; but for this he is richly recompensed in the following invention. He requires each of the characters in his story to be personated by a living individual; that this individual should, in sex, age, and figure, meet as near as may be the prevalent conceptions of his fictitious original, nay, assume his entire personality; that every speech should be delivered in a suitable tone of voice, and accompanied by appropriate action and gesture; and that those external circumstances should be added which are necessary to give the hearers a clear idea of what is going forward. Moreover, these representatives of the creatures of his imagination must appear in the costume belonging to their assumed rank, and to their age and country; partly for the sake of greater resemblance, and partly because, even in dress, there is something characteristic. Lastly, he must see them placed in a locality, which, in some degree, resembles that where, according to his fable, the action took place, because this also contributes to the resemblance: he places them, i.e., on a scene. All this brings us to the idea of the theatre. It is evident that the very form of dramatic poetry, that is, the exhibition of an action by dialogue without the aid of narrative, implies the theatre as its necessary complement. We allow that there are dramatic works which were not originally designed for the stage, and not calculated to produce any great effect there, which nevertheless afford great pleasure in the perusal. I am, however, very much inclined to doubt whether they would produce the same strong impression, with which they affect us, upon a person who had never seen or heard a description of a theatre. In reading dramatic works, we are accustomed ourselves to supply the representation.
August Wilhelm von Schlegel (Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature)
A model is a qualitative or quantitative representation of a process or endeavor that shows the effects of those factors which are significant for the purposes being considered.
Harold Chestnut
Some people incorrectly assume that a survival clause means that the representations are made or brought down on a continuing basis. This is inconsistent with the concept of representations as a snapshot and would have the effect of converting representations into covenants.
Charles M. Fox (Working with Contracts: What Law School Doesn't Teach You (PLI's Corporate and Securities Law Library))
We have already described the gatherings of the popular comitia; but that clumsy assembly in sheep pens does not convey the full extent to which the gerrymandering of popular representation could be carried in Rome. Whenever there was a new enfranchisement of citizens in Italy, there would be the most elaborate trickery and counter-trickery to enrol the new voters into as few or as many of the thirty old tribes as possible, or to put them into as few as possible new tribes. Since the vote was taken by tribes, it is obvious that however great the number of new additions made, if they were all got together into one tribe, their opinion would only count for one tribal vote, and similarly if they were crowded into just a few tribes, old or new. On the other hand, if they were put into too many tribes their effect in any particular tribe might be inconsiderable. Here was the sort of work to fascinate every smart knave in politics. The comitia tributa could be worked at times so as to vote right counter to the general feeling of the people.
H.G. Wells (The Outline of History (illustrated & annotated))
Habermas (1971–1973) described ideology as motivated false consciousness of social classes. He outlined the potential resolution of this false consciousness by means of a “critical theory” that would provide self-reflective enlightenment together with social emancipation. Ideology, within this conception, and also related ones of Marxist writers, implies, according to Althusser (1976), an unconsciously determined system of illusory representations of reality. This system, said Althusser, derived from the internalization of the dominant illusion a social class harbored about the conditions of its own existence, is achieved by means of the internalization of the “Paternal law” as part of the internalization of the oedipal superego. Habermas drew a parallel between the philosophical analysis of ideologies by means of critical theory, on the one hand, and the psychoanalytic situation, on the other. In psychoanalytic treatment, the patient also starts out with a “false consciousness,” and is helped by the analyst to gain enlightenment by means of self-reflection, an enlightenment geared to emancipation of the patient. If psychoanalysis frees the individual from an ideology as a false consciousness, one effect of psychoanalysis would be to eliminate the proneness to embrace ideologies. But Marxist thinkers, as Kolakowski (1978) points out, are caught in the dilemma that Marxism itself represents an ideology (notwithstanding the traditional Marxist efforts to solve the paradox by declaring Marxism to be a science rather than an ideology).
Otto F. Kernberg (Psychoanalytic Education at the Crossroads: Reformation, change and the future of psychoanalytic training (New Library of Psychoanalysis))
Allow me to explain. Social Justice can mean many things. Gay rights, minority rights, women's rights — all good civil rights stuff. The problem comes when social justice is defined by of things like media representation, cultural appropriation, language policing, etc. Because no one deserves a right to control how others speak or express themselves. Social Justice only makes sense to the extent that it doesn't effect freedom of speech and stuff.
T.J. Kirk
In the buzz of cerebral activity inside the brain, our subjective sense tells us that there arise countless choices, some of them barely breaking through to consciousness. If only for an instant, we hold in our mind a representation of those possible future states—washing our hands or walking into the garden to do battle with the weeds. Those representations have real, physical correlates in different brain states. As researchers such as Stephen Kosslyn of Harvard University have shown, mental imagery activates the same regions of the brain that actual perception does. Thus thinking about washing one’s hands, for instance, activates some of the same critical brain structures that actual washing activates, especially at those critical moments when the patient forms the mental image of standing at the sink and washing. “The intended action is represented…as a mental image of the intended action, and as a corresponding representation in the brain,” says Stapp. In a quantum brain, all the constituents that make up a thought—the diffusion of calcium ions, the propagation of electrons, the release of neurotransmitter—exist as quantum superpositions. Thus the brain itself is characterized by a whole slew of quantum superpositions of possible brain events. The result is a buzzing confusion of alternatives, a more complex version of Schrödinger’s alternative (alive or dead) cats. The alternative that persists longer in attention is the one that is caught by a sequence of rapid consents that activates the Quantum Zeno Effect.
Jeffrey M. Schwartz (The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force)
ironically in view of the great volume of publicity given to the terms of the Boundary Clause and its impact on the ‘wishes of the inhabitants’, this was the period in which the Northern Government introduced the deceptively styled Representation of the People Bill (No. 2). In fact its effect would be to gerrymander Counties Tyrone and Fermanagh so that the wishes of the Catholic inhabitants of those areas could not be electorally expressed.
Tim Pat Coogan (Michael Collins: A Biography)
As intentionality meets representation in icons, humans were able, in principle at least, to begin to communicate more effectively.
Daniel L. Everett (How Language Began: The Story of Humanity’s Greatest Invention)
Matter and force were enough. There was as yet no thought of an unrepresented base; for if the particles kept growing smaller there would always be bigger and better glasses to see them through. The collapse of the mechanical model was not yet in sight, nor had any of those other factors which have since contributed to the passing of the dead-centre of literalness - idealist philosophies, genetic psychology, psycho-analysis - as yet begun to take effect. Consequently there was as yet no dawning apprehension that the phenomena of the familiar world may be representations in the final sense of being the mental construct of the observer.
Owen Barfield (Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry)
If new āsana forms began to gain popularity in the mid-1920s, it was as a result of the representation of Indian bodies in the kind of mass-produced primers and journals that flourished alongside comparable physical culture material. One perhaps rather obvious point to be made here is that modern postural yoga required visual representation in a way that more "mental" forms of modern yoga did not. To take but one example: Vivekananda's Raja Yoga, which openly shuns āsanas, does not lose much from a complete absence of visual images—the message is fairly effectively (if not always cogently) conveyed through the written word. On the other hand, Kuvalayananda's āsanas of 1931 would be a far duller, more difficult to follow book were the motions and postures it details not supported with clear, visual, photographic references.
Mark Singleton (Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice)
Such distrust regarding democracy was also very widespread in the United States in the era of the supposed “Founding Fathers.” Ralph Ketcham perfectly summarized this situation by writing that “virtually all shades of opinion reviled monarchy and democracy, and, publicly at least, supported republicanism.” In effect, the distinction between democratic government and republican government was of the utmost importance (even if there were semantic variations), and politicians such as James Madison condemned the error consisting in confounding “a republic with a democracy.” He opposed, for his part, the qualities of republics, founded on representation and better adapted to large states, to the flaws of democracies, which are incapable of stretching across vast territories or of protecting themselves against pernicious factions. In a similar fashion, Alexander Hamilton called for the unification of the states into a “confederate republic” rather than into a democracy, which he described as being unstable and imprudent. William Cobbett, the editor of a pro-Federalist paper, went further still by expressing himself with remarkable candor: “O base democracy! Why, it is absolutely worse than street-sweepings, or the filth of the common sewers.” Yet it is perhaps John Adams who, better than anyone, lucidly summarized the dangers of democracy in the eyes of the most powerful statesmen. For he feared that the majority, who were very poor, would wish to redistribute goods and establish material equality.
Gabriel Rockhill (Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy)
That’s not radar—it’s something far wyrder. Call it wyrdar, perhaps. In Time Loops, I noted that precognition is a bit of a misnomer, since it implies thinking (cognition). I use the term because it is the most common and familiar term for future influence, but really we should define it as behavior oriented toward forthcoming rewards.5 It needn’t involve conscious thought at all. It might manifest as an urge, a hunch, or a gut feeling without any kind of mental representation attached. Waking premonitory experiences quite often produce positive effects in our lives, indirectly and unconsciously, via our behavior and via intentions that are unclear or that we are likely to misinterpret at the time. People who are highly intuitive may be especially good at acting on the kind of strange, senseless impulse that ends up saving a life or preventing some lesser mishap—perhaps by not censoring their reason, which will tend to get bogged down in finding rational causes for feelings and hunches rather than simply acting on those feelings. Intuition, I think, is just presentiment by another name, and being an intuitive person is just not getting in the way of this presentiment by overthinking our motives. Indeed, the kind of intuitive, spontaneous behavior displayed by Valerie or Mossbridge may be the most direct, important, and immediate, not to mention potentially survival-relevant, manifestation of the precognitive unconscious.
Eric Wargo (Precognitive Dreamwork and the Long Self: Interpreting Messages from Your Future (A Sacred Planet Book))
When the 1920 census revealed that urban Americans outnumbered rural Americans for the first time, the House in 1929 capped its numbers at 438 to keep power away from those urban dwellers, including immigrants, whom lawmakers considered dangerous, thus skewing the Electoral College in favor of rural America. Today, the average congressional district is 761,169 individuals, which both makes representation less effective and reduces the power of states with more people.[9]
Heather Cox Richardson (Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America)
Finding the Best Immigration Lawyer in Sydney: Services offered Navigating the complex landscape of immigration law can be daunting, especially in a city as diverse and bustling as Sydney. The right immigration lawyer can be an invaluable asset by providing essential advice and support. Here is a closer look at the services offered by the best immigration lawyers in Sydney and how they can help you during your immigration journey. Help with visa application One of the primary services provided by immigration attorneys is assistance with visa applications. There are different visa categories in Australia, including: Skilled Worker Visa: For individuals with specific skills that are in demand in Australia. Family visas: For reunification of family members, including partner, child and parent visas. Student visa: For those who want to study in Australia. Visitor visas: For short-term visits for tourism or business. The best immigration lawyers will help clients determine the most appropriate visa category, prepare the necessary documentation, and ensure correct and timely submission of applications. Legal advice and representation Immigration law can be complex, with ever-changing rules and regulations. An experienced immigration attorney provides legal advice customized to your situation. They can clarify complex legal jargon, outline your rights and responsibilities, and discuss the potential risks and benefits of different immigration options. If your application is refused or if you face visa cancellation, an experienced lawyer will represent you in appeals or judicial reviews. Their experience in handling such cases can greatly increase your chances of a favorable outcome. Preparation for interviews Many visa applications require interviews with immigration authorities. The best immigration attorneys will prepare you for these interviews by conducting mock interviews and advising you on how to effectively present your case. They will help you understand the types of questions that may come up and how to confidently answer them, ensuring that you are well prepared for the day. Compliance and Legal Obligations Once you have obtained a visa, it is essential to meet its conditions. Immigration attorneys provide advice on your responsibilities as a visa holder and help you understand what it takes to avoid violations that could jeopardize your immigration status. This includes understanding employment rights, study requirements and reporting obligations. Applications for permanent residence and citizenship For many immigrants, the ultimate goal is to achieve permanent residency and eventually citizenship. Immigration attorneys can help you with permanent residency applications, guide you through the points test and ensure that you meet all the necessary requirements. In addition, if you want to apply for Australian citizenship, an immigration lawyer can help you understand the eligibility criteria, prepare your application and deal with any issues. They can also help you prepare for your citizenship test and ensure you are ready to demonstrate your knowledge of Australian history, culture and values. Help with special cases Some immigration situations are more complicated than others. The best immigration lawyers are equipped to handle special cases, including: Refugee and Humanitarian Visas: For those seeking asylum in Australia due to persecution or significant risk in their home country. Employer-sponsored visas: We help businesses sponsor foreign workers and ensure compliance with labor laws. Health and Character Issues: Addressing issues that may arise from health screenings or character evaluations, helps clients prepare necessary documentation and appeals. Consulting services for businesses If you are a business looking to hire talent from overseas, an immigration attorney can provide essential services. They can h
immigration lawyer sydney
of the will, which is a faculty either of producing objects corresponding to representations or of determining itself to effect such objects (whether the physical power is sufficient or not), that is, of determining its causality.
Immanuel Kant (Kant: Critique of Practical Reason (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy))
Tragedy is to be regarded, and is recognised as the summit of poetical art, both on account of the greatness of its effect and the difficulty of its achievement.
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation)
Your body is a physical representation of the cumulative effect of all the experiences you’ve had throughout your life.
Dashama Konah Gordon (Journey to Joyful: Transform Your Life with Pranashama Yoga)
In short: by imagining a space-filling fluid, and allowing for its possible effects, we are able to consider a wide variety of transformed images as representations of the same scene, viewed through different states of the fluid. In a similar way, by introducing just the right kind of material into space-time, Einstein was able to allow the distortions of physical law, which are introduced by Galilean transformations that vary in space and time, to be accomplished as modifications of a new material. That material is called the metric field or, as I prefer to say, metric fluid. The expanded system, containing the original world plus a hypothetical new material, obeys laws that remain the same even when we make variable changes in velocity, though the state of the metric fluid changes. In other words, the equations for the expanded system can support our huge, "outrageous" local symmetry. We might expect that systems of equations that support such an enormous amount of symmetry are very special, and hard to come by. The new material must have just the right properties. Equations with such enormous symmetry are the analogue of the Platonic solids-or, better, the spheres-among equations!
Frank Wilczek (A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design)
Borges's extreme architecture attempts to visualize the universe by assigning to every object real and unreal, now and yet to come, a code or sign, a corresponding figure within the Library. It seeks to render totality visible, to effect a total visibility and visuality. The Library of Babel is a view of the universe inside and out, an X-ray of the universe and universal X-ray, seen from within and without. It is a representation of everywhere: a perfect duplication of the universe. And of you: universal. An endless and eternal cinema, an imaginary archive that extends into the universe until it is indistinguishable from it, until you are indistinguishable from the universe.
Akira Mizuta Lippit (Atomic Light (Shadow Optics))
Although earlier computers existed in isolation from the world, requiring their visuals and sound to be generated and live only within their memory, the Amiga was of the world, able to interface with it in all its rich analog glory. It was the first PC with a sufficient screen resolution and color palette as well as memory and processing power to practically store and display full-color photographic representations of the real world, whether they be scanned in from photographs, captured from film or video, or snapped live by a digitizer connected to the machine. It could be used to manipulate video, adding titles, special effects, or other postproduction tricks. And it was also among the first to make practical use of recordings of real-world sound. The seeds of the digital-media future, of digital cameras and Photoshop and MP3 players, are here. The Amiga was the first aesthetically satisfying PC. Although the generation of machines that preceded it were made to do many remarkable things, works produced on them always carried an implied asterisk; “Remarkable,” we say, “. . . for existing on such an absurdly limited platform.” Even the Macintosh, a dramatic leap forward in many ways, nevertheless remained sharply limited by its black-and-white display and its lack of fast animation capabilities. Visuals produced on the Amiga, however, were in full color and could often stand on their own terms, not as art produced under huge technological constraints, but simply as art. And in allowing game programmers to move beyond blocky, garish graphics and crude sound, the Amiga redefined the medium of interactive entertainment as being capable of adult sophistication and artistry. The seeds of the aesthetic future, of computers as everyday artistic tools, ever more attractive computer desktops, and audiovisually rich virtual worlds, are here. The Amiga empowered amateur creators by giving them access to tools heretofore available only to the professional. The platform’s most successful and sustained professional niche was as a video-production workstation, where an Amiga, accompanied by some relatively inexpensive software and hardware peripherals, could give the hobbyist amateur or the frugal professional editing and postproduction capabilities equivalent to equipment costing tens or hundreds of thousands. And much of the graphical and musical creation software available for the machine was truly remarkable. The seeds of the participatory-culture future, of YouTube and Flickr and even the blogosphere, are here. The
Jimmy Maher (The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga (Platform Studies))
Between social mobilization and liberal democracy From Alexis de Tocqueville onward there has been a large body of democratic theory arguing that modern liberal democracy cannot exist without a vigorous civil society.29 The mobilization of social groups allows weak individuals to pool their interests and enter the political system; even when social groups do not seek political objectives, voluntary associations have spillover effects in fostering the ability of individuals to work with one another in novel situations—what is termed social capital. The correlation noted above linking economic growth to stable liberal democracy presumably comes about via the channel of social mobilization: growth entails the emergence of new social actors who then demand representation in a more open political system and press for a democratic transition. When the political system is well institutionalized and can accommodate these new actors, then there is a successful transition to full democracy. This is what happened with the rise of farmers’ movements and socialist parties in Britain and Sweden in the early decades of the twentieth century, and in South Korea after the fall of the military dictatorship in 1987. A highly developed civil society can also pose dangers for democracy and can even lead to political decay. Groups based on ethnic or racial chauvinism spread intolerance; interest groups can invest effort in zero-sum rent seeking; excessive politicization of economic and social conflicts can paralyze societies and undermine the legitimacy of democratic institutions. 30 Social mobilization can lead to political decay. The Huntingtonian process whereby political institutions failed to accommodate demands of new social actors for participation arguably happened in Bolivia and Ecuador in the 1990s and 2000s with the repeated unseating of elected presidents by highly mobilized social groups.31
Francis Fukuyama (The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution)
Claude Monet's Water Lilies (The Clouds) consists of nothing more than dabs of different colored paint on a canvas.14 But because of the particular arrangement of those dabs of paint, Monet has produced not simply a piece of canvas with dabs of paint on it. Monet has produced for us a painting, a unique picture, a cognitively recognizable and culturally meaningful representation of a reality, a new entity with its own characteristics and capacities to cause effects in the world. One of the emergent causal capacities of those particularly arranged dabs of paint is the ability to evoke certain emotions in people who view the painting, such as warmth or serenity. Neither the recognizable and meaningful picture nor the capacity to evoke emotions is present in the dabs of paint totaled up. It is through Monet's particular relational arrangement of those paint dabs that a unique picture emerges possessing particular characteristics and capacities that can cause experiences in observers. To say that Monet's Water Lilies (The Clouds) is reducible to many dabs of colored paint on a canvas would be to say that all of the characteristics and capacities we observe in the painting are present in the sum total of all the dabs of paint and the piece of canvas. To say that about this painting would be to make oneself a reductionist in relation to it. And to do this would be misguided.
Christian Smith (What Is a Person?: Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up)
Today, we have no other representation of reality than the operational, the effective. We no longer conceive of an existence without effect. What is not effective – workable, governable – is not real. Philosophy's next task is to think of a politics and an ethics that are freed of the concepts of duty and effectiveness. Thinking about inoperativeness, for example? The insistence on work and production is a malign one. The Left went down the wrong path when it adopted these categories, which are at the centre of capitalism. But we should specify that inoperativeness, as I conceive it, is neither inertia nor idling. We must free ourselves from work, in an active sense – I very much like this French word désoeuvrer. This is an activity that makes all the social tasks of the economy, law and religion inoperative, thus freeing them up for other possible usages. For precisely this is proper to mankind: writing a poem that escapes the communicative function of language; or speaking or giving a kiss, thus changing the function of the mouth, which first and foremost serves for eating.
Anonymous
Get Out Of Legal Trouble By Finding A Great Medical Malpractice Lawyer In Baltimore You will save on legal costs when you're taking the time to effectively ensure that your medical malpractice lawyer knows what you need. Your lawyer ought to be well versed on how to get the best outcome for your case. Take these factors into consideration the next time you are searching for the right attorney. Dependable attorneys are famous for having comprehensive, detailed interviews with their clients. The questions, though they might seem excessive, can help the medical malpractice lawyer in learning more about you before going into the courtroom, which will ultimately allow him to offer you the very best representation that they could. Whether it is from a book, online, or through questioning, any attorney worth his salt is usually out to learn more info. You have to find a new attorney immediately if the one you have is uninterested in your case and only asks a few pointless questions. Law firms and independent attorneys are like all other business - they can acquire clients through deception. Look for proof when an attorney claims his work is exceptional in order to validate it. Perform a comprehensive background check to understand their case history, their performance in college and the type of reputation that they've. Online reviews can also help you determine if the legal consultant delivered on his or her promises. There's nothing more important in the attorney-client relationship than good communication. A good, dependable medical malpractice lawyer can make sure that you have a clear understanding of any details they provide. The percentage of winning grows higher when your legal consultant understands and has all the info they need to win your case. Excellent interactions between you and your lawyer are vital to winning your case. When working with a legal consultant, be very specific about what type of attorney you want to hire. You'll need to find a legal consultant that specializes in the kind of law that governs your legal case. Find attorneys who have had success in similar cases. Call for a consultation in order to understand more about the attorney and what other skills or experience they possess in the field your legal case falls under. A medical malpractice lawyer who lacks moral character won't be up front about their ability to represent you. That attorney must be willing to inform you in the event that one is not able to handle your legal case in some way. Be really careful never to fall for attorneys who make false reports about past accomplishments. There are a few attorneys who'll need to work your legal case just to receive that new experience.
Schochor Federico and Staton, P.A.
From this standpoint, the role of the market, as already noted, is that it permits unanimity without conformity; that it is a system of effectively proportional representation
Milton Friedman (Capitalism and Freedom)
When he brought the dead to life, it was said that it was him and not him. The onlookers fell into bewilderment (hayra) just as the man of intellect becomes bewildered in his logical reflection when he sees an individual human being bringing the dead to life, as that is one of the divine qualities - bringing to life with speech, not mere bringing with animation. (12) The beholder is bewildered because he sees the form of a man who possesses a divine effect. That led some of them to speak of that as "incarnation" and say that 'Isa was Allah since it was by Him that 'Isa brought the dead to life. Thus they are charged with disbelief (kufr) which is the veil because they veil Allah, who brings the dead to life, by the human form of 'Isa. Allah said, "They are unbelievers who say, 'Allah is the Messiah, the son of Maryam.'" (13) They fell into both error and disbelief at the end of all they said, not because they say that he is Allah nor by calling him the son of Maryam. But they made the attribution that Allah, insofar as He brought the dead to life, was contained in the human form of the nasut which is called the son of Maryam. There is no doubt that 'Isa was the son of Maryam. The hearer imagines that they have attributed divinity to the form, and so they make divinity the same as the form. That is not what they do. Rather, they make divine He-ness the subject in the human form which is the son of Maryam. They should differentiate between the form of 'Isa and the divine principle because they have made the form the same as the principle. Jibril was in the form of man who did not breathe and then he breathed. One differentiates between the form and the breath, and the breath from the form. The form existed without the breath - thus the breath is not part of its essential definition. For that reason, differences occurred among the people of different [Christian] parties regarding 'Isa and what he was. Whoever looks at him in respect to his mortal human form, says that he is the son of Maryam. Whoever looks at him in respect to his mortal representational form relates him to Jibril. Whoever looks at him in respect to what was manifested from him of bringing the dead to life, relates him to Allah by the quality of the spirit, and says that he is the Spirit of Allah, (14) that is, by Him life was manifested in whomever received his breath. Sometimes Allah is imagined to be the passive principle in 'Isa, and sometimes the angel is imagined in him, and sometimes mortal humanity is imagined in him. So the conception of everyone is based on what predominates that person. 'Isa is the Word of Allah, (15) the Spirit of Allah, (16) and the slave of Allah. (17) That is something which no one else has in the sensory form. Indeed, each person is attached to his father of form, not to the One who breathed his spirit into the human form. When Allah fashioned the human body as He said, "When I have shaped him," (15:29;38:72) then He breathed into Him, that was from His spirit. Thus in its being and source, the spirit is ascribed to Allah. That is not the case with 'Isa. The shaping of his body and mortal form is implied in the breath of the spirit. Others, as we mentioned, are not like that.
Ibn ʿArabi (The Bezels of Wisdom)
which a drawing imported into a text document can no longer be altered, but must be changed in the original graphics program and reintroduced into the text document.) Out of the box the Star was multilingual, offering typefaces and keyboard configurations that could be implemented in the blink of an eye for writing in Russian, French, Spanish, and Swedish through the use of “virtual keyboards”—graphic representations of keyboards that appeared on screen to show the user where to find the unique characters in whatever language he or she was using. In 1982 an internal library of 6,000 Japanese kanji characters was added; eventually Star users were able to draft documents in almost every modern language, from Arabic and Bengali to Amharic and Cambodian. As the term implied, the user’s view of the screen resembled the surface of a desk. Thumbnail-sized icons representing documents were lined up on one side of the screen and those representing peripheral devices—printers, file servers, e-mail boxes—on the other. The display image could be infinitely personalized to be tidy or cluttered, obsessively organized or hopelessly confused, alphabetized or random, as dictated by the user’s personality and taste. The icons themselves had been painstakingly drafted and redrafted so they would be instantaneously recognized by the user as document pages (with a distinctive dog-eared upper right corner), file folders, in and out baskets, a clock, and a wastebasket. Thanks to the system’s object-oriented software, the Star’s user could launch any application simply by clicking on the pertinent icon; the machine automatically “knew” that a text document required it to launch a text editor or a drawing to launch a graphics program. No system has ever equaled the consistency of the Star’s set of generic commands, in which “move,” “copy,” and “delete” performed similar operations across the entire spectrum of software applications. The Star was the epitome of PARC’s user-friendly machine. No secretary had to learn about programming or code to use the machine, any more than she had to understand the servomechanism driving the dancing golf ball to type on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Changing a font, or a margin, or the space between typed lines in most cases required a keystroke or two or a couple of intuitive mouse clicks. The user understood what was happening entirely from watching the icons or documents move or change on the screen. This was no accident: “When everything in a computer system is visible on the screen,” wrote David Smith, a designer of the Star interface, “the display becomes reality. Objects and actions can be understood purely in terms of their effects on the display.
Michael A. Hiltzik (Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age)
Corona Immigration Lawyer serves the Corona, California, community by providing expert legal guidance on immigration matters such as family-based green cards, naturalization, and removal defense. Led by attorney Aleksandra Gontaryuk, who has personal experience with the immigration process as a refugee, the firm offers compassionate and effective legal representation to help clients achieve their immigration goals.
Corona Immigration Lawyer
All this is to say that plays such as we have been examining do not (like the rituals themselves) suspend life in order to stage a ritual. They embed the essential movement of that ritual in life's common fabric. They ritualize reality. The general interest, no doubt, of a representation of life such as we find in these plays may be great in itself; but in the present context it is something more distinctive than this which has the main interest. This is, that because the ritual movement is embedded in a representation of life, and grows out of that, the double, deep response in us as audience which I have suggested that it excites is excited not of something which stands apart from life, but of something which points back to that: and does so with all the power of a work of art. The ritual sequence emerges from, and returns into, the world we know. It enacts and elucidates one of life's constant potentialities. Unlike the ritual, the tragedy does not stand in isolation. Insofar as it represents life, it brings us back to our own lives. This is an art which springs from reality, has its time of independence, and takes us back whence it sprang. The profound excitation of our natures which has been the effect of the plays is directed back upon the normal waking experience which is that nature's permanent source and guide.
John Holloway (The Story Of The Night Studies In Shakespeare S Major Tragedies)
Now the union leaders were as effectively isolated from the rank and file of their organization as any executive of the companies with which they did battle. Suddenly Daniel knew what it was. A new hierarchy was in the process of developing. Sooner or later, the man inside that office, behind the closed door, had to lose touch with the people outside, those whom he represented. No longer was there an emotional relationship. Now it was a calculated representation of an ideal that itself had turned into another form of big business.
Harold Robbins (Memories of Another Day)
Undoing their objectivization as goods to be bought and sold, therefore, required not only that captives escape the physical hold exerted on them by the forts, factories, and other coastal facilities used to incarcerate them but, more difficult still, that they reverse their own transformation into commodities, by returning to a web of social bonds that would tether them safely to the African landscape, within the fold of kinship and community. For most, as we have seen, distance made return to their home communities impossible. The market, they learned, made return to any form of social belonging impossible as well. If they managed to escape from the waterside forts and factories, their value resided not in their potential to join communities as slave laborers, wives, soldiers, or in some other capacity, but rather in their market price. For most, the power of the market made it impossible to return to their previous state, that of belonging to (being ‘owned’ by) a community—to being possessed, that is, of an identity as a subject. Rather, the strangers the runaways encountered shared the vision of the officials at Cape Coast Castle: the laws of the market made fellow human beings see it as their primary interest to own as commodities these escaped captives, rather than to connection them as social subjects. More often than not, then, captives escaped only to be sold again. As Snelgrave’s language articulates so clearly, the logic of the market meant that enslavement was a misfortune for which no buyer needed to feel the burden of accountability. Indeed, according to the mercantile logic in force, buyers (of whatever nationality) could not bear the weight of political accountability. Buying people who had no evidence social value was not a violation or an act of questionable morality but rather a keen and appropriate response to opportunity; for this was precisely what one was supposed to do in the market: create value by exchange, recycle someone else’s castoffs into objects of worth. Thus, then, did the market exert its power—through its language, its categories, its logic. The alchemy of the market derived from its effectiveness in producing a counterfeit representation; it had become plausible that human beings could be so completely drained of social value, so severed from the community, that their lives were no longer beyond price: they could be made freely available in exchange for currency. The market painted in colors sufficiently believable as to seem true the appalling notion that ‘a human being could fail to be a person.
Stephanie E. Smallwood (Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora)
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)— As mentioned in the previous chapter this film is one of the best representations of ancestor simulations. When the protagonist finds out he is living in a simulation, one of the RPG players, who exists outside the simulation, tells him that their simulation is “one of thousands.” The thing that makes this simulation unique is that it is the only one where they in turn develop their own ancestor simulations, or nested simulations. Although we see only the nested simulations and not the parallel ones, they are definitely there, which means that it is also faithfully representing a simulated multiverse.
Rizwan Virk (The Simulated Multiverse: An MIT Computer Scientist Explores Parallel Universes, The Simulation Hypothesis, Quantum Computing and the Mandela Effect)
Marcy Resnik said as a woman lawyer, building a thriving legal practice can be both challenging and rewarding. Women have historically faced barriers in the legal profession, including gender bias, lack of representation in leadership positions, and work-life balance challenges. However, with determination, strategic planning, and effective business strategies, women can build successful and thriving legal practices.
Marcy Resnik
This is called the plurality voting system (‘plurality’ meaning ‘largest number of votes’) – often called the ‘first-past-the-post’ system, because there is no prize for any runner-up, and no second round of voting (both of which feature in other electoral systems for the sake of increasing the proportionality of the outcomes). Plurality voting typically ‘over-represents’ the two largest parties, compared with the proportion of votes they receive. Moreover, it is not guaranteed to avoid the population paradox, and is even capable of bringing one party to power when another has received far more votes in total. These features are often cited as arguments against plurality voting and in favour of a more proportional system – either literal proportional representation or other schemes such as transferable-vote systems and run-off systems which have the effect of making the representation of voters in the legislature more proportional. However, under Popper’s criterion, that is all insignificant in comparison with the greater effectiveness of plurality voting at removing bad governments and policies.
David Deutsch (The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World)
Secondly, this text will often refer to the “collapse of compassion” effect. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that humans care more about animals when they are presented as named individuals, rather than when they are shown in groups (Payne 2010). Generally, the more victims a tragedy has, the less humans will care, and the less-likely they are to donate their time or money to help solve the situation (Payne 2010; Cameron et al. 2011: 1). This is termed the “collapse of compassion” Effect.
Rebecca Rose Stanton (The Disneyfication of Animals (The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series))
On the rare occasions when farm animals have been individualized in fiction, perceptions of their rights have changed. For example, Babe (1995) is a film that appears to have influenced some viewers’ perceptions of eating meat. Babe is a comedy- drama about an anthropomorphised pig that dreams of being a sheep dog. During the film, Babe (the pig) escapes being slaughtered several times, often in comical circumstances. The story ends happily with Babe achieving his ambition of becoming a “sheep dog” and thus avoiding his fate as a farmed pig. In the period following the film’s release, there was a dramatic rise in the number of vegetarians, especially young female vegetarians (Nobis 2009: 58). This change in attitude was dubbed the “Babe effect” (Nobis 2009: 58). The “Babe effect” likely occurred because this film depicted farm animals as intelligent, individual, and compassionate individuals, something that had seldom been done previously and is usually reserved for higher-order species (Plumwood 2012: 55–74).
Rebecca Rose Stanton (The Disneyfication of Animals (The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series))
Dr. Masaru Emoto was able to visually demonstrate the variations of different themes of consciousness in his book, The Hidden Messages in Water. Dr. Emoto captured the effects that vibrational frequencies had on frozen water crystals using a powerful microscope with high-speed photography. He conducted experiments that consisted of exposing water to different positive and negative speech, positive and negative thoughts, various types of music, and even photographs. He then froze the samples of water to examine how the formation of crystals aesthetically changed. His experiments showed that water exposed to higher calibrating frequencies, such as love in the form of positive speech and pleasant music, generated uniquely beautiful, symmetrical crystals. Whereas the water exposed to negative frequencies, such as shame or anger, yielded unformed and asymmetrical crystals. The physical representation of each crystal formation is a perfect visual of how themes of consciousness manifest into the physical realm.
Mathew Micheletti (The Inner Work: An Invitation to True Freedom and Lasting Happiness)
The value of business architecture is to provide an abstract representation of an enterprise and the business ecosystem in which it operates. By doing so, business architecture delivers value as an effective communication and analytical framework for translating strategy into actionable initiatives. The framework also enhances the enterprise’s capacity to enact transformational change, navigate complexity, reduce risk, make more informed decisions, align diverse stakeholders to a shared vision of the future, and leverage technology more effectively
Business Architecture Guild (The Business Architecture Quick Guide: A Brief Guide for GameChangers)
they not only recognize and comply with prescriptions to imagine but also themselves serve as reflexive props, generating by their actions and thoughts and feelings fictional truths about themselves, and imagining accordingly. Thus do appreciators immerse themselves in fictional worlds. They are carried away by the pretense, caught up in the story. Such immersion is not equally part of all appreciation, however. Sometimes appreciators participate scarcely at all. Some representations positively discourage participation, especially the psychological participation that would constitute the experience of being caught up in the story. That experience is perhaps the aim of much “romantic” art, broadly speaking, but works of certain other kinds shun it as sentimental excess, deliberately “distancing” the appreciator from the fictional world. Representations sometimes hinder even the imagining of what is fictional. In doing so they effectively undercut appreciators’ roles as reflexive props. For if one does not imagine a proposition, it is unlikely to be fictional that one knows or believes it; and if one imagines it with minimal vivacity, one is unlikely to have the experience of fictionally being concerned or upset or relieved or frightened or overjoyed by the fact that it is true.
Kendall L. Walton (Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts)