Plato and Descartes theories Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Plato and Descartes theories - Essay Example Though both seem to represent similar ideas, they are different in some ways which will be discussed in the paper. Plato is of the view that knowledge is not acquired through sense experience; individuals are born with platonic ideas or forms (Popkin and Stroll, 225). These ideas are contained in the soul which exists prior to birth. To gain real knowledge, the soul has to recall platonic ideas. Plato assumes that children forget the knowledge they already have at birth and therefore, must regain consciousness and recall it. The knowledge recalled is the only true or certain knowledge since the knowledge acquired through sense experience is deceiving and uncertain. For him, the body is empty as it cannot access abstract reality of the world but only shadows (Robinson, 86). The soul and body are distinct but temporarily united until death where the soul leaves to occupy another body. He also observes that the forms or objects of knowledge are eternal, necessary and unchanging (Popkin & Stroll, 224). For example, numbers used in mathematics or geometrical truths which depend on ideas and meanings do not change. The shadows or diagrams can change but the procedures and reasoning lead us to acquire the truth about them. Just like Plato, he agrees that senses cannot be trusted. Whatever we see through our senses can be deceiving and therefore not certain; for example, we may mistake one thing for another especially if we view it at a distance and when it is near. Senses are deceiving to the extent that we may not be aware whether we are existing or we are dreaming of our existence and therefore, to be certain, a lot of thinking is needed (Pessin). According to Popkin and Stroll (234) Descartes discovered that the certain thing is ‘I think, therefore I am.† In his meditations, he doubted whether he had a body but had no doubt that he had a mind since a mind must be in existence for him to think. He therefore,

Socrates Account of Wisdom in Apology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Socrates Account of Wisdom in Apology - Essay Example Socrates also claims that the sophists are wise and posses’ wisdom that lacks in him. When Delphi asserts that Socrates is the wisest person in the universe, Socrates remembers of his acquaintance that accompanied him to Oracle and questioned him whether there existed a person wiser than Socrates. The Oracle response, that there was no one wiser than Socrates was, threw him to a lot of confusion embarked on a mission to find the truth about wisdom. Socrates thinks it is important to pursue wisdom, as it will help realize the human ignorance on the perception of wisdom. Socrates further thinks and claims that only the God can be wise. According to Socrates, human wisdom is limited and by realizing that he knows nothing he can achieve a lot. Remarkably, Socrates believes pursuing wisdom, will lead to human happiness since one will be able to realize and reject unjustified beliefs. Socrates wisdom is valuable to man as it is humble and does mislead, threaten and misinform others by advocating false knowledge. Therefore, knowing and possessing the true wisdom leads to human happiness Plato argues that for the city to be just, measures must be taken to control the level of poverty in order to avoid social strife that may bring injustices (421d). In addition, for the city to be unified and stable, it must be big enough in size (423b). Socrates proceeds to discuss justice in the already founded city. He claims that the founded city is completely virtuous and good and hence it is courageous, wise, just and moderate (427e). He further argues that justice will be found when the other virtues are discovered: wisdom, moderation, and courage (428a). Socrates shows that the city rulers possess the wisdom of ruling, the military possesses the courage, and moderation is found by following the structure of the city on who rules and who is ruled. Socrates further believes that the four virtues of the city are found in the individual, which he compares with the city analogous

Managing Contention for Shared Resources on Multicore Processors Case Study - 1

Managing Contention for Shared Resources on Multicore Processors - Case Study Example As a result, they ran a group of applications on different schedules, paired differently such that each application had the opportunity to pair with the other applications. They ran each possible schedule in the same memory domain rather than as an individual entity. In doing this they managed to attain the actual degradation of each bench mark while sharing the same memory domain as another bench mark. They then compared the actual best schedule with the estimated best schedule, that is they compared the degradation of the estimated best schedule in relation to the actual best one. They concluded that high-rate-miss applications should not be combined with low-rate-miss applications. Zhuravlev et al.(2) adds that previous works meant to improve thread performance in multicore systems was based on cache contention as it was assumed that it was the main, if not the only cause of performance degradation. They also state that (Zhuravlev et al. 20) "in this context cache contention is suffering extra cache misses because its co-runner (threads running on cores that share the same LLC) bring their own data into the LLC evicting the data of others." As stated by (Federova et al. 45) when a thread requests a cache line that doesnt exist, then a cache miss is registered, and a new cache line must be allocated. Chandra, Guo, Kim and Salihin (nd, p1) indicate that the sharing of a cache by threads in multicore processors is important to prevent redundancy. However, when several threads share the same cache, they compete for the available cache space. The sharing of cache space isnt uniform and therefore, the performance of those threads that access less cache space is greatly reduced. Federova et al. (32) have throughout the analysis aim to prove that the best formula to avoid contention in multicore processor systems is by building a contention-aware scheduler. They state that assigning applications to cores depending on the best possible schedule, may

Amistad Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Amistad - Essay Example The Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico would continue to tolerate the outlawed slave trade until the 1860s, but eventually outlaw slavery by the end of the 1870s2. By the time of the Amistad incident, the feeling in America towards slavery had polarized. Feelings ran the gamut from the abolitionists that called for an immediate ban on slavery, to the people that felt a constitutional amendment was long overdue, and included the advocates that argued slavery was a states' issue and wished to prolong the practice, primarily in the rural South for economic reasons. In the Northern States, "the rising voices of black, as well as white, abolitionists are partly responsible for ending slavery in the Northern states during the first part of the nineteenth century"3. According to Jackson, "if many were sympathetic to the Africans, there were plenty of others among the American press and public with only contempt for them", and Cinque, the leader of the mutineers, was described by one journalist to be "as miserably ignorant and brutalized a creature as the rest"4. Many people such as "Lewis Tapan, a prominent New York businessman, Joshua Leavitt, a law yer and journalist who edited the Emancipator in New York, and Simeon Jocelyn, a Congregational" could sense the coming of the civil war over this unresolvable issue and "decided to publicize the incident to expose the brutalities of slavery and the slave trade"5. In 1839, the nation was deeply divided over the slavery issue and many people were willing to take a hard stance either for or against it. C. Legal aspects of the Supreme Court's decision. Though there was significant political and emotional pressure placed on the court, the eventual decision was a correct legal finding. The case rested on three principles; jurisdiction, the mutineer's status as slaves, and the concept of slaves as property. "The Spanish minister pointed out that the Amistad mutiny took place on a Cuban vessel traveling between Cuban ports and was thus beyond the jurisdiction of American courts"6. The court ruled that the mutineers were "kidnapped and free Negroes, the treaty with Spain cannot be obligatory upon them; and the United States are bound to respect their rights as much as those of Spanish subjects"7. The court rightfully found that they had been kidnapped, since they had been taken in violation of international agreements, and since they were being held as kidnapped captives, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision. "The court declared that the blacks had never been lawful slaves and that they were kidnapped and illegally transp orted to Cuba. Their mutiny was an act of self-defense"8. Adams challenged the Court to find a more sweeping decision "on the basis of natural rights doctrines found in the Declaration of Independence"9. However, the majority opinion "found slavery repugnant and contrary to Christian morality, he supported the laws protecting its existence and opposed the abolitionists as threats to ordered society. Property rights, he believed, were the basis of civilization"10. D. Impact of the Amistad incident on slavery. The impact of the Amistad incident gave the abolitionists a social and political boost that would continue to echo into the future. "The importance of the Amistad case lies in the fact that Cinque

Critique a Paradox Market v Resources Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Critique a Paradox Market v Resources - Essay Example The focus was essentially on either the external environment of the firm or its internal capabilities of the firm define its overall competitiveness within an industry or a particular market. One perspective suggests that the markets have preferences over the resources as firms following such a perspective tend to tailor their strategies according to changes taking place in their external environment. However, on the other hand, the other perspective which emphasizes resources over the market and tend to focus on the internal capabilities of the firm. The basic argument behind the market based view of the firm level competitiveness is based on the outside in perspective. The outside in perspective basically advocates that the firms are largely driven by their external environment and all their strategies and actions are the result of external influences. What is however, important is to note that firms following such an approach are quick to adapt to the changes in their external environment and take lesser time responding to external shocks Outside In perspective also allow firms to take up the opportunities much faster than other firms and develop necessary flexibility to respond to such opportunities in the most appropriate way. It is also critical to be important to understand that a market based view also allow firms to develop abilities to anticipate the emerging changes in their target markets and allow themselves to develop strategies which potentially help them to either withstand the emerging external threats or take up opportunities. Such firms therefore tend to focus more on their customers as the key variables to decide about the potential changes to take place in the market place. (Brooks) and perform well into an environment which is more dynamic and fluid in nature. Firms following such a perspective also need to develop its ability to continuously reposition itself and if a firm has presence in many markets at the same time; it may be required to re-position it according to the market conditions prevailing in each market. Such firms, however, tend to lose sight of their distinctive competencies and rely upon less on their own individual capabilities i.e. strengths to gain the competitive advantage. As discussed above that the firms develop competencies to anticipate external environment therefore they put in place the processes for collecting market intelligence regarding their potential as well as existing competitors and customers. Such capability further allows them to integrate such information into their strategic decision making process to better position themselves into the market. (Hult and Ketchen Jr) Such inflexibility does not therefore, yield a long term competitive advantage for the firms, and they tend to be complacent by focusing on just one aspect of the competitiveness. What is also critical that the market based view can only benefit the firms if the variables

Case study week 3 Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Week 3 - Case Study Example Auditing requires enough time and thus fixing time within the company’s busy schedule may delay the process. Finally in a high competition industry, determining inherent risk is important since there are higher complex valuation issues and thus more experienced staffing is needed. This will affect the client in the sense that the cost of increased staffing digs into the company’s profit margins which are minimal in such an industry. The year 1998 was faced with allegation from the delloitte auditors on misappropriation of the audit results due to the wrong facts provided by the vice president of Just for Feet. Below are the risk factors that are likely to have affected the company. The affected parties here were Just for Feet, Logo Athletics, Reebok and Deloitte Being in Thomas Shine’s position; working related ethics did not allow him to engage in such a fraudulent conversion with Don Allen Ruttenberg. The wise decision here was to ask Ruttenberg to organize a conference where the executives of the vendor companies would decide and thus he would have avoided the

Application of CATs in a nursing course Research Paper

Application of CATs in a nursing course - Research Paper Example k, Teacher-Designed Feedback Forms, Group Instructional Feedback Technique, and Classroom Assessment Quality Circles, offers a means for assessment of the student reactions to the teacher and the teaching style of the teacher. The second group of techniques namely Recall, Summarize, Question, Comment, and Connect (RSQC2), Group-Work Evaluations, Reading Rating Sheets, and Assignment Assessments, instead focuses the assessment on the reactions of the students to the activities, assignments, and materials used in the learning environment (Angelo). The essential purpose of Chain Notes is to provide the limited information of the level of engagement and involvement of the students to a particular teaching activity. The Electronic Mail Feedback serves the purpose of providing a channel of communication through which information can be gathered on the basis of the answers provided by the students to questions posed to them. Teacher Designed Feedback Forms provide an easy and quick means to get focused information from students. There are three questions that are central to the efficiency of learning in classrooms namely what students think is aiding their learning process, what are the obstacles in the learning process, and what are the specific suggestions they have to offer for making the learning process more efficient. The Group Instructional Feedback Technique provides a means for teachers to find answers to these questions. Classroom Assessment Quality Circles serve two purposes. The first is that they are the means through which student assessment feedback on their class lesions, readings, exams, and major assignments can be collected. The second purpose lies in the role that it can play in providing a structured and positive means for students play a more active role in the learning activities in the classrooms (Angelo). RSCQ2 technique permits the comparison the ability to recall, understand, and evaluate a class session. It is also capable of informing the