Nietzsche's will-to-power ontology : an interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil

Abstract: Nietzsche's Will-to-Power Ontology: An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil § 36 By: Mark Minuk Will-to-power is the central component of Nietzsche's philosophy, and passage 36 of Beyond Good and Evil is essential to coming to an understanding of it. 1 argue for and defend the thesis that will-to-power constitutes Nietzsche's ontology, and offer a new understanding of what that means. Nietzsche's ontology can be talked about as though it were a traditional substance ontology (i.e., a world made up of forces; a duality of conflicting forces described as 'towards which' and 'away from which'). However, 1 argue that what defines this ontology is an understanding of valuation as ontologically fundamental—^the basis of interpretation, and from which a substance ontology emerges. In the second chapter, I explain Nietzsche's ontology, as reflected in this passage, through a discussion of Heidegger's two ontological categories in Being and Time (readiness-to-hand, and present-at-hand). In a nutshell, it means that the world of our desires and passions (the most basic of which is for power) is ontologically more fundamental than the material world, or any other interpretation, which is to say, the material world emerges out of a world of our desires and passions. In the first chapter, I address the problematic form of the passage reflected in the first sentence. The passage is in a hypothetical style makes no claim to positive knowledge or truth, and, superficially, looks like Schopenhaurian position for the metaphysics of the will, which Nietzsche rejects. 1 argue that the hypothetical form of the passage is a matter of style, namely, the style of a free-spirit for whom the question of truth is reframed as a question of values. In the third and final chapter, 1 address the charge that Nietzsche's interpretation is a conscious anthropomorphic projection. 1 suggest that the charge rests on a distinction (between nature and man) that Nietzsche rejects. I also address the problem of the causality of the will for Nietzsche, by suggesting that an alternative, perspectival form of causality is possible.

Personality and neuropsychological factors involved in females' relational aggression

The personality and neuropsychological factors associated with relational aggression were examined in a group of30 grade 6,7, and 8 girls identified through cluster analysis as being highly, yet almost exclusively, relationally aggressive and a group of 30 nonaggressive matched controls. Parents of the students in both groups completed the Coolidge Personality and Neuropsychological Inventory (1998), a 200- item DSM-IV -TR aligned, parent-as-respondent, standardized measure of c.hildren' s psychological functioning. It was found that high levels of relational aggression, in the absence of physical and verbal aggression, were associated with symptoms of DSM-IV - TR Axis I oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder and a wide variety of personality traits associated with DSM-IV -TR Axis II paranoid, borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, schizotypal, and passive aggressive personality disorders. Implications of these findings for theory, practice, and further research are discussed.

Generating Relation Algebras for Qualitative Spatial Reasoning

Basic relationships between certain regions of space are formulated in natural language in everyday situations. For example, a customer specifies the outline of his future home to the architect by indicating which rooms should be close to each other. Qualitative spatial reasoning as an area of artificial intelligence tries to develop a theory of space based on similar notions. In formal ontology and in ontological computer science, mereotopology is a first-order theory, embodying mereological and topological concepts, of the relations among wholes, parts, parts of parts, and the boundaries between parts. We shall introduce abstract relation algebras and present their structural properties as well as their connection to algebras of binary relations. This will be followed by details of the expressiveness of algebras of relations for region based models. Mereotopology has been the main basis for most region based theories of space. Since its earliest inception many theories have been proposed for mereotopology in artificial intelligence among which Region Connection Calculus is most prominent. The expressiveness of the region connection calculus in relational logic is far greater than its original eight base relations might suggest. In the thesis we formulate ways to automatically generate representable relation algebras using spatial data based on region connection calculus. The generation of new algebras is a two pronged approach involving splitting of existing relations to form new algebras and refinement of such newly generated algebras. We present an implementation of a system for automating aforementioned steps and provide an effective and convenient interface to define new spatial relations and generate representable relational algebras.

Being Relational With Underserved Youth: A Reflective Process

When working with under-served youth, possibly the most important, yet often times the most difficult, thing for practitioners to do is to build positive, trusting, open relationships. This study aims to address this challenge. Two groups of under-served youth were examined, one being teens deemed “at-risk” and one being youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This study was novel in its approach as all efforts were made to ensure the youth's opinions on how to be relational with them were heard. Two youths with ASD were nonverbal and a special picture interview procedure was developed to allow their participation. Three thematic statements emerged from the data collected: 1. Youth need low anxiety relationships. 2. Youth need novel forms of engagement. 3. Youth need us to understand that their actions reflect their histories. The analyses that lead to these statements are described as well as the reasoning and implications of these statements.

Linking Ethical Leadership and Employees’ In-Role Performance: Exploring the Mediating Roles of Psychological Capital and Follower-Leader Relational Capital

This study investigates the mediating impact of psychological capital and follower-leader relational capital on the relationship between ethical leadership and in-role performance through the lenses of social exchange theory, social information processing theory, and psychological resources theory. Analysis of data collected from a sample of 171 employees and 24 supervisors from Pakistan reveals that ethical leadership has a positive effect on followers’ in-role job performance, yet this effect is fully explained through the role of psychological capital and partially through follower-leader relational capital. Significant implications of these findings for further research and practice are discussed.

Affect, ontology, and pedagogy: An autoethnographic study on student-teacher relationships

In studying affect within the realm of student-teacher relationships my thesis project use the concept of “affect” as composed by Baruch Spinoza (1992, 2007). I focus specifically on how Deleuze (1988) interprets and implements the term within his own philosophy, as well as on Antonio Negri’s (2011, 1991) work on Spinoza including his and Michael Hardt’s (2000, 2004, 2009) more recent works. This thesis will explore Spinoza’s affect within the discourse of Affective Pedagogy and Critical Pedagogy while remaining committed to a Spinoizist ontology as outlined by Deleuze (1988). I used artefacts from my past experiences as a student and teacher to produce evocative writing pieces which act as affective continuances of my past experiences as a student, student-teacher, and teacher, and the relationships of affect that composed them. This project used these artefacts and the writings they produced as sites of intensity that are carried through from traces, to evocative thresholds, to concepts, and finally into analysis.

An Abstract Algebraic Theory of L-Fuzzy Relations for Relational Databases

Classical relational databases lack proper ways to manage certain real-world situations including imprecise or uncertain data. Fuzzy databases overcome this limitation by allowing each entry in the table to be a fuzzy set where each element of the corresponding domain is assigned a membership degree from the real interval [0…1]. But this fuzzy mechanism becomes inappropriate in modelling scenarios where data might be incomparable. Therefore, we become interested in further generalization of fuzzy database into L-fuzzy database. In such a database, the characteristic function for a fuzzy set maps to an arbitrary complete Brouwerian lattice L. From the query language perspectives, the language of fuzzy database, FSQL extends the regular Structured Query Language (SQL) by adding fuzzy specific constructions. In addition to that, L-fuzzy query language LFSQL introduces appropriate linguistic operations to define and manipulate inexact data in an L-fuzzy database. This research mainly focuses on defining the semantics of LFSQL. However, it requires an abstract algebraic theory which can be used to prove all the properties of, and operations on, L-fuzzy relations. In our study, we show that the theory of arrow categories forms a suitable framework for that. Therefore, we define the semantics of LFSQL in the abstract notion of an arrow category. In addition, we implement the operations of L-fuzzy relations in Haskell and develop a parser that translates algebraic expressions into our implementation.