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Kant the Buddhist: An Analysis of Kantian Ethics, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Religion in the Context of Christianity and Buddhism
Get PDFThis thesis analyzes Kantian ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion within the context of Christianity and Buddhism. The first part of the paper is dedicated to an exegesis of Kant’s ethical theory and his philosophy of religion. The second part of the paper presents arguments for why Buddhism is closer to Kant’s ideal religion than Christianity. Specifically, this latter section analyzes Kant’s necessary postulates for pure practical reason within the context of each religion. The conclusion of this thesis is that Buddhism better aligns with Kant’s ideal religion with regard to both metaphysics and the ideal goal of religion: cultivating moral persons
A Customizable Speech Practice Application for People Who Stutter
Get PDFStuttering is a speech impediment that often requires speech therapy to curb the symptoms. In speech therapy, people who stutter (PWS) learn techniques that they can use to improve their fluency. PWS often practice their techniques extensively in order to maintain fluent speech. Many listen to audio recordings to practice where a single word or sentence is played on the recording and then there is a pause, giving the user a chance to say the word(s) to practice. This style of practice is not customizable and is repetitive since the contents do not change. Thus, we have developed an application for iPhone that uses a text-to-speech API to read single words and sentences to PWS, so that they can practice their techniques. Each practice mode is customizable in that the user can choose to practice certain sounds that they struggle with, and the app will respond by choosing words that start with the desired sound or generate sentences that contain several words that start with the desired sound. We generate sentences in two ways: an AI approach using recurrent neural networks and a “fill-in-the-blank” approach. When generating sentences, the goal is that the sentences are relatively short and contain simple words, so that the user does not struggle to repeat the word or sentence
Urban bat pups take after their mothers and are bolder and faster learners than rural pups.
Get PDFBackground: Urbanization is rapidly changing our planet and animals that live in urban environments must quickly adjust their behavior. One of the most prevalent behavioral characteristics of urban dwelling animals is an increased level of risk-taking. Here, we aimed to reveal how urban fruitbats become risk-takers, and how they differ behaviorally from rural bats, studying both genetic and non-genetic factors that might play a role in the process. We assessed the personality of newborn pups from both rural and urban colonies before they acquired experience outdoors, examining risk-taking, exploration, and learning rates.
Results: Urban pups exhibited significantly higher risk-taking levels, they were faster learners, but less exploratory than their rural counterparts. A cross-fostering experiment revealed that pups were more similar to their adoptive mothers, thus suggesting a non-genetic mechanism and pointing towards a maternal effect. We moreover found that lactating urban mothers have higher cortisol levels in their milk, which could potentially explain the transmission of some personality traits from mother to pup.
Conclusions: Young bats seem to acquire environment suitable traits via post-birth non-genetic maternal effects. We offer a potential mechanism for how urban pups can acquire urban-suitable behavioral traits through hormonal transfer from their mothers
