Colloquium 5: Plato and Aristotle on What Desires Form

While millennials are culturally homogenized as a unitary group, scholarly work has examined the complex historical, economic, and social challenges that shape millennials’ heterogeneity. This paper draws on three studies to build on this work, showing how millennials experience and enact social change across different spaces: beauty politics and the natural hair movement, black men shaping new masculinities at work and home, and undocumented students navigating institutions of higher education. We show how different groups of millennials bridge and forge new communities, generate hybridized identities that challenge fixed conceptions of identity, and develop new mechanisms for changing the world around them. From findings that highlight the complexity of intra-group and intra-generational experience, we argue for a multidimensional theory of millennials and social change that links contexts, intersectionality, and generational transmission. Such a framework offers a more systematic way to conceptualize variation as it shapes contentious politics and social change.

During natural movement on the earth’s surface, we are seldom aware of vestibular sensations, and when we do become aware of them, they usually signify an unnatural stimulus or an abnormality of vestibular function. With specially contrived conditions of observation, relationships between acceleratory stimuli and vestibular sensations and perceptions can be described quantitatively and qualitatively. These relationships constitute the primary subject matter of this chapter, but to appreciate this material in relation to daily experiences, we must first consider why vestibular sensations do not typically achieve conscious awareness during natural voluntary head and body movement.

The Thomist 67 (2003): 439-62 ARISTOTLE'S UNDERSTANDING OF PLACE THOMAS R. LARSON St. Anselm College Manchester, New Hampshire I THE NOTION OF "PLACE" is central to Aristotle's understanding of the motions of inanimate natural bodies. According to Aristotle, "the energeia of a light body is to be in a place, and up; and it is prevented whenever it is in a contrary place" (Physics 255b11-13).1 He states further that "it is the nature of [heavy and light bodies] each to be at a certain place, and to be light and to be heavy is just this, specifically, to be up in the case of the light or to be down in the case of the heavy" (255b16ff). It is vital therefore that we rightly understand what Aristotle means by "place," and how he sees place functioning as a principle of motion in nature. We must ask, for example, how a "place" can be the final cause and actuality (energeia) of a natural body. What does it really mean for a natural body, such as fire, to be in potency to a specific place, such as "up"? What is it about "up" that makes it the natural place for fire? Such questions, moreover, must be answered in a manner consistent with Aristotle's overall philosophy of nature. In order to come to grips with the notion of place and its role in natural motion, I will examine Aristotle's discussion of place as it is found in Physics 6.1-5. My goal here is to extract Aristotle's 1 Unless otherwise noted, I use Aristotle's Physics, trans. with commentary and glossary by Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press, 1980) as a basis for the translations I provide: 439 440 THOMAS R. LARSON principled understanding of place. Only after examining and properly understanding Aristotle's notion of place can we accurately judge its role in natural motion. In presenting my understanding of Aristotle's doctrine, I wm chaHenge the arguments that Helen S. Lang has offered on these questions. Lang contends that Aristotle's concept of nature is essentially tied to an understanding of place according to which it serves both as a principle of order the universe and as the actuality, and hence the cause of m0tion, of inanimate bodies. She daims that absolute immobility is the most important feature of Aristotle's notion of place. In my judgment, Lang's interpretation of place conflicts both with the texts of Aristotle and with Aristotle's overall natural philosophy, According to Lang, place is itself a cause of order in the universe, a formal constituent that renders the whole universe ordered and determinate, and hence is like a formal cause; yet Aristotle states explicitly that place cannot be a formal cause. Lang's daims require that place exist prior to and independent of bodies; as I will show, however, according to Aristotle's principled argument, place can in no way be taken as prior to or independent of natural bodies" Lang also daims that ..respective proper place is the actuality and hence the mover of each element": as an actuality, place serves as a final cause, and as a mover, it serves as an efficient cause. Yet Aristotle explicitly states that place is neither a final nor an efficient cause" How a place, by itself, can be the actuality of an element is never adequately addressed by Lang. Nor does she ever articulate her understanding of "actuality," I wiH argue that her account of place illicitly abstracts from the natural bodies that constitute place. Lang further argues that "intrinsic directionality" and absolute immobility of the cosmos are inseparable from Aristotle's natural philosophy in general. To remove absolute directionality from Aristotle's physics (that is, to say that "up" and "down" are relative, and have no absolute natural ground), Lang suggests, would be to annihilate Aristotle's understanding of nature. I ARISTOTLE'S UNDERSTANDING OF PLACE 441 argue that such daims are not supported by Aristotle's texts, or by his overall natural philosophy. After my criticism of Lang, I shall present and defend James A. Weisheipl's analysis of place in Aristotle...

Ibn Sina (d. 428/1037) is one of the most celebrated 'scientist philosophers' the Muslim world has produced. (1) Besides the influential Liber Canonis on medicine, Ibn Sina wrote Kittab al-Shifa, multi volume encyclopedic masterpiece embodying a vast field of knowledge from logic and metaphysics to mathematics, astronomy and music, which was in part translated into Latin and exerted tremendous influence in subsequent centuries. This article aims to discuss some aspects of Ibn Sina's cosmology. An outline of his picture of the physical universe is given together with an exposition of its philosophical underpinnings, followed by an analysis of his views about the nature and motion of heavenly bodies. 1. General Picture of the Cosmos Drawing on Aristotle's cosmology and Ptolemaic astronomy, Ibn Sina views the universe as consisting of nine concentric spheres contiguously nested, one within the other, from the lowest sphere of the moon to the outermost starless sphere. These spheres are thought to be concentric because they seem to share a common center, which is the center of the universe, taken as coincident with the earth's center. On this model, each of the seven known 'wandering stars' or planets (al--kawakib al-mutahayyirah)--namely, the moon, the two inner planets (Mercury and Venus), the sun, and the three outer planets (Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn)-and the 'fixed stars' (al-thawabit) are assumed to be attached to eight solid but transparent spheres that carry them as they revolve around the earth. (2) There is a ninth, outermost sphere (kurah kharijah anha muhitah), which defines the edge or boundary of the universe and supposedly contains no star (ghayr mukawkabah), posited to explain the daily motion of the heaven, whereas the motion of the eighth sphere (that of the fixed stars) is said to be due to the precession of the equinoctial points (nugtatd al-itidal). (3) Each of these spheres, according to Ibn Sina, is governed by an intelligence and a soul, which are respectively the remote cause and proximate principle of their motion. Ibn Sina's model rests on four fundamental assumptions, namely: (1) that the universe is one in number; (2) that it is finite in extent and spherical in shape; (3) that it has a center; and (4) that the earth lies at its center. Let us first consider the third and fourth assumptions. Ibn Sina argues for the central position of the earth by means of a logical argument which essentially de rives from the Aristotelian physical theory of four elements (earth, water, air, fire) and their natural motion and place. For him as for Aristotle, any motion of natural bodies (that is, anything capable of motion and change, whether animate or inanimate) is either simple or composite, natural or unnatural. Simple motion, which belongs to simple bodies (as opposed to composite bodies), is either rectilinear (mustagimah) or circular (mustadirah). Simple rectilinear motion is either motion away from the center, motion toward the center, or motion about the center. (4) Motion away from the center toward the cosmic circumference, termed upward motion, is natural to light bodies, whereas motion toward the center, called downward motion, is natural to heavy bodies. (5) The motion of a body is said to be natural (tabiiyyah) if it drives the moving body toward the place where it will rest 'naturally', that is, by nature and not by an external force, whereas unnatural motion is that which is due to some external force contrary to the thing's nature (6)--nature being identified as an intrinsic principle of being moved and being at rest. (7) Since the sub-lunar elements (anasir) are natural simple bodies (basait), their motions must be both simple and natural, (8) but also rectilinear and not circular because, in the absence of any hindrance, each of the elements will by nature either move straight up or straight down, seeking its natural place. (9) By 'natural place' (hayyiz tabii) is meant the place to which a natural body is moved or inclined to move and where it will rest naturally, (10) namely, the cosmic center for heavy bodies, and the circumference for light ones. …

The Meaning and Importance of Common Goods Benjamin L. Smith EVERY SCIENCE includes a specific subject matter, common and proper principles, and proper conclusions. The principles are the indemonstrable starting points of demonstration within the science, including axiomatic propositions and foundational notions. The principles of the practical sciences are precepts related to ends, and the architectonic principle of all practical science is the ultimate end.1 The notion of the common good and the principle of the primacy of the common good are important for all practical sciences. Indeed, a right understanding of the meaning and importance of the common good is an essential element of any species of wisdom about practical matters and for the exercise of prudence. The purpose of this article is to define the common good in general and explain its importance. Although the political common good will be discussed, the aim of this essay is to define the common good as a general category of goods. The question “What is a common good?” needs to be addressed prior to defining the specifically political common good. Defining the common good in general is timely because there has been a consistent distortion of the meaning of the common good among some Thomist commentators beginning with Jacques Maritain and reaching to contemporary proponents of the New Natural Law theory. Maritain consistently argued that [End Page 583] the common good of the political community is subordinated to the individual good of personal happiness, whether natural or supernatural.2 He was supported in this interpretation by Ignatius Eschmann.3 Charles De Koninck opposed Eschmann, arguing that Eschmann misunderstood the unity of the common good.4 More recently, proponents of the New Natural Law theory have argued that the political common good is merely instrumental to more basic goods and John Finnis—a leading representative of this group—has defined the common good as an aggregate of individual goods.5 The “instrumental interpretation” of the common good has been vigorously opposed by Lawrence Dewan, Michael Pakaluk, and John Goyette.6 In general, this article supports the efforts of those opposing Maritain, Eschmann, and the New Natural Law theory. I. Preliminary Theses and Distinctions Since the common good is a version of the good it will prove helpful to summarize some relevant theses about the good; these theses may seem basic and remote but they are important. Following Aristotle, Thomas teaches that the good is that which [End Page 584] all things desire; it is the desirable objective that stimulates intention, desire, or natural movement. In this perspective, the good (or the perception of the good) is prior to intention and desire. Rational creatures cognize something as good prior to intention; animals sense that something is good prior to desire; plants and inanimate substances naturally move towards that which is desirable for them proximately by natural inclination but ultimately by divine providence. Accordingly, the good, understood as that which is desirable, operates as a final cause, moving agents to action. And something is perceived to be desirable insofar as it is perceived to be perfective, for, according to Thomas, all things seek their own perfection, namely, the actualization of their natural powers.7 However, not everything that is desired is really good. Sometimes we err about what is perfective; sometimes we pursue an inferior sort of perfection when we should not; sometimes we pursue a perfection in the wrong way or in the wrong context. Nevertheless, the good and perfection are synonymous. For this reason, Thomas affirms that goodness is really the fullness of being, for what makes something complete and perfect is the actualization of its being. Goodness is simply the full realization of being proportionate to a given subject. In fact, Thomas insists that the name “good” does not really add anything to its subject other than a certain relation.8 Good does not signify any distinct property, rather, it signifies that which actualizes and therefore perfects a given subject. Thomas divides the perfection of being in a way that mirrors his universal division of being into act and potency. Something becomes good insofar as it is actualized and perfected in its species-specific powers. The cause...

The present study used videotape to examine selected determinants of perceptions of physical attractiveness and gender (masculinity/femininity) in a college student sample of 30 men and 85 women. Both body and facial attractiveness contributed to the prediction of overall attractiveness, although neither variable was a more powerful predictor than the other. Perceptions of overall physical attractiveness, both static ("fixed target") and dynamic ("moving target"), were positively related to perceptions of grooming. In predicting dynamic physical attractiveness from static physical attractiveness and certain nonverbal indices thought to be related to attractiveness evaluations in naturally occurring conditions, only static physical attractiveness entered the regression equation at a significant level. Still, perceived friendliness and natural body movement were related to overall attractiveness perceptions. Finally, physical attractiveness was significantly related to gender perceptions in both males and females, with natural body movement and tight-fitting clothes also predictive of perceived masculinity in males and overall grooming and natural body movement predictive of perceived femininity in females.

A dual dipole electric field probe has been used to measure surface electric fields in vivo on a human subject over a frequency range of 0.1–800 Hz. The low-frequency electric fields were induced by natural body movements such as walking and turning in the fringe magnetic fields of a 3 T magnetic resonance whole-body scanner. The rate-of-change of magnetic field (dB/dt) was also recorded simultaneously by using three orthogonal search coils positioned near to the location of the electric field probe. Rates-of-change of magnetic field for natural body rotations were found to exceed 1 T s−1 near the end of the magnet bore. Typical electric fields measured on the upper abdomen, head and across the tongue for 1 T s−1 rate of change of magnetic field were 0.15 ± 0.02, 0.077 ± 0.003 and 0.015 ± 0.002 V m−1 respectively. Electric fields on the abdomen and chest were measured during an echo-planar sequence with the subject positioned within the scanner. With the scanner rate-of-change of gradient set to 10 T m−1 s−1 the measured rate-of-change of magnetic field was 2.2 ± 0.1 T s−1 and the peak electric field was 0.30 ± 0.01 V m−1 on the chest. The values of induced electric field can be related to dB/dt by a ‘geometry factor’ for a given subject and sensor position. Typical values of this factor for the abdomen or chest (for measured surface electric fields) lie in the range of 0.10–0.18 m. The measured values of electric field are consistent with currently available numerical modelling results for movement in static magnetic fields and exposure to switched magnetic field gradients.For more information on this article, see medicalphysicsweb.org

Human motion prediction is one of the fundamental studies of computer vision. Much work based on deep learning has shown impressive performance for it in recent years. However, long-term prediction and human skeletal deformation are still challenging tasks for human motion prediction. For accurate prediction, this paper proposes a GCN-based two-stage prediction method. We train a prediction model in the first stage. Using multiple cascaded spatial attention graph convolution layers (SAGCL) to extract features, the prediction model generates an initial motion sequence of future actions based on the observed pose. Since the initial pose generated in the first stage often deviates from natural human body motion, such as a motion sequence in which the length of a bone is changed. So the task of the second stage is to fine-tune the predicted pose and make it closer to natural motion. We present a fine-tuning model including multiple cascaded causally temporal-graph convolution layers (CT-GCL). We apply the spatial coordinate error of joints and bone length error as loss functions to train the fine-tuning model. We validate our model on Human3.6m and CMU-MoCap datasets. Extensive experiments show that the two-stage prediction method outperforms state-of-the-art methods. The limitations of proposed methods are discussed as well, hoping to make a breakthrough in future exploration.

Parkinson's disease is often diagnosed based on clinical signs, such as the description of a range of movement symptoms, and medical observations. Traditional diagnostic methods could be prone to subjectivity issues because they depend on the evaluation of subtle motions that might be difficult to define with the human eye. Hence, simple and reliable engineering methods are required for the early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease and for providing timely treatment to the tens of millions of patients who are affected by this disease. In this work, we developed a flexible sensor using laser-induced graphene to differentiate between natural finger bending and hand tremor. Measurements were recorded when the sensor was bent at various angles (30 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees, 120 degrees, and 150 degrees) to mimic the natural finger-bending movements. Moreover, hand tremor was simulated by shaking the sensor vigorously. Our findings demonstrated a nearly linear relationship between the peak voltage measured across the laser-induced graphene sensor and the amount of bending. The degree of natural bending and hand tremors were multi-classified using a neural network machine learning classifier, showing an accuracy of 78.5% and an area under the curve of 0.97. The results of this study are promising in making an informed decision about differentiating Parkinson's-induced hand tremors from natural body movements and reducing misdiagnosis of Parkinson's.

Avatar motion control by natural body movement via camera

The detection performance of a walk-through metal detector (WTMD) is affected not only by the electromagnetic properties and size and shape of the test objects, but potentially also by the type of motion of the test object through the portal of the WTMD. This motion, it has been argued, can contribute to the uncertainty in detecting threat objects being carried through the WTMD. Typical laboratory-based testing uses a robotic system, or similar, to push a test object through the portal with a trajectory that is a straight line and has a constant velocity. This testing, although reproducible and accurate, does not test for those trajectories the are representative of natural body motion. We report the effects of nonrectilinear trajectories on the detection performance of WTMDs.

Exoskeletons are wearable robots that are attached to the human body and can improve the physical performance of their operators. Nowadays, these biomechatronic systems are used in different fields such as rehabilitation, military and industry. Since exoskeletons have close interaction surface with human body, it should be considered in biomechanical factors such as degrees of freedom, joints' range of motion, anthropometric dimensions and safety issues in designing such systems. The aim of this study was designing a lower extremity exoskeleton which does not create disorder in natural motion during user walking on a flat ground, beside parameters mentioned earlier. The design of this exoskeleton has been done in SolidWorks software based on gait kinematics data obtained from 10 subjects. The novelty of this study was usage of force generated by arm muscles of the user for helping him to walk. This idea beside simplification of the manufacturing process, decrease the cost and time too. The results of this study showed that the proposed mechanism in the design of this exoskeleton has appropriate coincidence with natural body states in degrees of freedom and joints' range of motion during walking.

Creating agents which utilize natural verbal and non-verbal communication is an appropriate goal for many researchers involved in human-computer interaction. Using these types of agents enhances their capabilities as a communication tool for teaching humans inside a virtual environment. This paper describes how Herbert Clark's theory of joint activities can be applied to agents, extending it to a domain in which communication is weighted towards the non-verbal, specifically body expressions. The major framework for this implementation is the joint action ladder, in which a communicative act is checked at several levels before it can be understood and responded to by the receiver of the act. A proposed environment has been created in the form of a basketball game, where a user can interact with his team through natural body movements. Through this type of interaction, the user has the potential to learn gestural expressions through observation as well as less explicit concepts such as the internal state of agents. Several avenues of research that can be followed through the use of the basketball game are also described.

Simulation research on Tai Chi movement posture resolution based on multi-MEMS sensor combination

We demonstrate a general-purpose large-workspace machine that is inherently safe and smooth. The design is targeted to allow natural whole body movements without any potential for machine induced injury. The device can be used for various applications including training athletes, rehabilitating elderly people, and large product prototyping.