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Topic Review
Medium Essentialism
Medium Essentialism is a philosophical theory stating that each artform has its own distinctive medium, and that the essence of such an artform is dependent on its particular medium. In practice, the theory argues that every artwork should manifest its essential properties, those which no other artform can employ. The theory relies on the presumption that every artform has a unique medium, and is divided into two main interpretations. The ‘limitation’ interpretation of Medium Essentialism argues that, due to their medium, some artforms should be constrained in their aspirations. The ‘productive’ interpretation reasons that a work's medium determines what content or style will function best, and that practitioners should pursue ventures aligning with the nature of this chosen medium. Clement Greenberg is a prolific medium-essentialist in relation to modernist art, proposing that artists such as Jackson Pollock are successful because they properly exploit elements of their chosen medium, such as a painting's physical flatness. However, Medium Essentialism was most propagated by film practitioners throughout the twentieth century, as it legitimised cinema as an artform for the first time. Previously, film had been regarded as merely a recorded representation of a written play. It is therefore most discussed today by film theorists, stemming from the work of critics such as André Bazin. Regardless of the interpretation favoured, what constitutes a film's medium, and therefore essential meaning, has been heavily debated, and has prompted the creation of several sub-theories. The theory has been widely discussed among contemporary film theorists and has featured in the Anthology of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures. Whilst Medium Essentialism is not merely a subcategory of the Essentialism theory, it is relevant to the notion that certain characteristics are integral to every entity's purpose and identity. Non-essentialism rejects the existence of such an 'essence'. Non-essentialism has been the view preferred by scholars such as Noël Carroll, criticising Medium Essentialism in relation to film.
  • 397
  • 15 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Maya
Maya (/ˈmɑːjə/; Devanagari: माया, IAST: māyā), literally "illusion" or "magic", has multiple meanings in Indian philosophies depending on the context. In later Vedic texts, māyā connotes a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem"; the principle which shows "attributeless Absolute" as having "attributes". Māyā also connotes that which "is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal" (in opposition to an unchanging Absolute, or Brahman), and therefore "conceals the true character of spiritual reality". In the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, māyā, "appearance", is "the powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real." In this nondualist school, māyā at the individual level appears as the lack of knowledge (avidyā) of the real Self, Atman-Brahman, mistakingly identifying with the body-mind complex and its entanglements. In Hinduism, māyā is also an epithet for goddess Lakshmi, and the name of a manifestation of Lakshmi, the goddess of "wealth, prosperity and love". In Buddhist philosophy, Māyā is invoked as one of twenty subsidiary unwholesome mental factors, responsible for deceit or concealment about the nature of things. Maya is also the name of Gautama Buddha's mother.
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  • 27 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Master–Slave Dialectic
The master–slave dialectic is the common name for a famous passage of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, though the original German phrase, Herrschaft und Knechtschaft, is more properly translated as Lordship and Bondage. It is widely considered a key element in Hegel's philosophical system, and has heavily influenced many subsequent philosophers. The passage describes, in narrative form, the development of self-consciousness as such in an encounter between what are thereby (i.e., emerging only from this encounter) two distinct, self-conscious beings. The essence of the dialectic is the movement or motion of recognizing, in which the two self-consciousnesses are constituted in being each recognized as self-conscious by the other. This movement, inexorably taken to its extreme, takes the form of a "struggle to the death" in which one masters the other, only to find that such lordship makes the very recognition he had sought impossible, since the bondsman, in this state, is not free to offer it.
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  • 08 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Maitreya
Template:Infobox Buddha Maitreya (Sanskrit), Metteyya (Pali), is regarded as a future Buddha of this world in Buddhist eschatology. In some Buddhist literature, such as the Amitabha Sutra and the Lotus Sutra, he is referred to as Ajita. According to Buddhist tradition, Maitreya is a bodhisattva who will appear on Earth in the future, achieve complete enlightenment, and teach the pure dharma. According to scriptures, Maitreya will be a successor to the present Buddha, Gautama Buddha (also known as Śākyamuni Buddha). The prophecy of the arrival of Maitreya refers to a time in the future when the dharma will have been forgotten by most on the terrestrial world. Maitreya has also been adopted for his millenarian role by many non-Buddhist religions in the past, such as the White Lotus, as well as by modern new religious movements, such as Yiguandao.
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  • 07 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Luso-Flemish Master of Lourinhã
The Master of Lourinhã masterpieces are the best that Renaissance painting produced in Portugal during the governance of King D. Manuel I, in the Luso-Flemish period. The paintings were commissioned c. 1515 by Queen D. Maria, second wife of King D. Manuel I. Its underdrawing, the fineness of the landscapes and the transparency of chromatic material, reveal the talent of a great flemish artist following Bruges and Antuerpian models.
  • 925
  • 30 Jun 2023
Topic Review
Luciferianism
Luciferianism is a belief system that venerates the essential characteristics that are affixed to Lucifer, the name of various mythological and religious figures associated with the planet Venus. The tradition, influenced by Gnosticism, usually reveres Lucifer not as the devil, but as a destroyer, a guardian, liberator, light bringer or guiding spirit to darkness, or even the true god as opposed to Jehovah.
  • 21.1K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Lojong
Lojong (Tib. བློ་སྦྱོང་,Wylie: blo sbyong) is a mind training practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition based on a set of aphorisms formulated in Tibet in the 12th century by Chekawa Yeshe Dorje. The practice involves refining and purifying one's motivations and attitudes. The fifty-nine or so slogans that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering. They contain both methods to expand one's viewpoint towards absolute bodhicitta, such as "Find the consciousness you had before you were born" and "Treat everything you perceive as a dream", and methods for relating to the world in a more constructive way with relative bodhicitta, such as "Be grateful to everyone" and "When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up." Prominent teachers who have popularized this practice in the West include Pema Chödrön, Ken McLeod, Alan Wallace, Chögyam Trungpa, Sogyal Rinpoche, Kelsang Gyatso, Norman Fischer and the 14th Dalai Lama.
  • 713
  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
LiveJournal
LiveJournal (Russian: Живой Журнал), stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, as a way of keeping his high school friends updated on his activities. In January 2005, American blogging software company Six Apart purchased Danga Interactive, the company that operated LiveJournal, from Fitzpatrick. Six Apart sold LiveJournal to Russian media company SUP Media in 2007; the service continued to operate out of the U.S. via a California-based subsidiary, LiveJournal, Inc., but began moving some operations to Russian offices in 2009. In December 2016, the service relocated its servers to Russia, and in April 2017, LiveJournal changed its terms of service to conform to Russian law. As with other social networks, a wide variety of public figures use the service, as do political pundits, who use it for political commentary, particularly in Russia, where it partners with the online newspaper Gazeta.ru.
  • 1.4K
  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
List of Topics Characterized as Pseudoscience
This is a list of topics that have, either currently or in the past, been characterized as pseudoscience by academics or researchers. Detailed discussion of these topics may be found on their main pages. These characterizations were made in the context of educating the public about questionable or potentially fraudulent or dangerous claims and practices—efforts to define the nature of science, or humorous parodies of poor scientific reasoning. Criticism of pseudoscience, generally by the scientific community or skeptical organizations, involves critiques of the logical, methodological, or rhetorical bases of the topic in question. Though some of the listed topics continue to be investigated scientifically, others were only subject to scientific research in the past and today are considered refuted, but resurrected in a pseudoscientific fashion. Other ideas presented here are entirely non-scientific, but have in one way or another impinged on scientific domains or practices. Many adherents or practitioners of the topics listed here dispute their characterization as pseudoscience. Each section here summarizes the alleged pseudoscientific aspects of that topic.
  • 49.6K
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
List of Datasets for Machine Learning Research
These datasets are used for machine-learning research and have been cited in peer-reviewed academic journals. Datasets are an integral part of the field of machine learning. Major advances in this field can result from advances in learning algorithms (such as deep learning), computer hardware, and, less-intuitively, the availability of high-quality training datasets. High-quality labeled training datasets for supervised and semi-supervised machine learning algorithms are usually difficult and expensive to produce because of the large amount of time needed to label the data. Although they do not need to be labeled, high-quality datasets for unsupervised learning can also be difficult and costly to produce.
  • 1.5K
  • 21 Oct 2022
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