Books on the topic 'Deep Generatve Models'

Embodied cognition is the view that intelligence arises out of the interaction between an agent’s body and its environment. Taking such a view generates novel scientific hypotheses about biological intelligence and opportunities for advancing artificial intelligence. In this chapter we review one such set of hypotheses regarding how a robot may generate models of self, and others, and then exploit those models to recover from damage or exhibit the rudiments of social cognition. This modeling of self and others draws mainly on three concepts from neuroscience and AI: forward and inverse models in the brain, the neuronal replicator hypothesis, and the brain as a hierarchical prediction machine. The chapter concludes with future directions, including the integration of deep learning methods with embodied cognition.

This book examines how pain is represented in a range of literary texts and genres from the nineteenth-century United States. It considers the aesthetic, philosophical, and ethical implications of pain across the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Alice James, as the national culture of pain progressively transformed in the wake of the invention of anesthesia. Through these writers, it argues that pain, while undeniably destructive, also generates language and identities, and demonstrates how literature participates in theorizing the problems of mind and body that undergird the deep chasms of selfhood, sociality, gender, and race of a formative period in American history. Writing Pain considers first Emerson’s philosophy of compensation, which promises to convert pain into gain. It then explores the limitations of this model, showing how Jacobs contests the division of body and mind that underwrites it and how Dickinson challenges its alleged universalism by foregrounding the unshareability of pain as a paradoxical measure of togetherness. The book investigates next the concurrent economies of affects in which pain was implicated during and after the Civil War and argues, through the example of James and Phelps, for queer sociality as a response to the heteronormative violence of sentimentalism. The last chapter on Alice James extends the critique of sentimental sympathy while returning to the book’s premise that pain is generative and the site of thought. By linking literary formalism with individual and social formation, Writing Pain eventually claims close reading as a method to recover the theoretical work of literature.

Despite initially acknowledging the deep gulf between his concern with the truth and the fanciful compositions of the poets, Thucydides is strongly influenced by the examples of Homer and Attic tragedy. Three areas of influence can be distinguished. First, Homer and the tragedians provide fundamental structural principles: Thucydides adopts Homer’s solution to narrating simultaneous strands of events, follows Homer’s example in heightening suspense, and learns from both Homer and tragedy to generate unity through narrative patterning. By adopting Homeric and tragic features, Thucydides infuses his narrative with a specific tone: tragic irony and reversals create an atmosphere of eerie inevitability, Homeric “Almost episodes” underscore the fragility of human endeavors, the Homeric emphasis on factual precision heightens Thucydides’ tone of objective pathos. Third, Thucydides’ allusions to specific Homeric and tragic episodes, besides demonstrating Thucydides’ engagement with Homer and tragedy, reveal his persisting distance from his poetic models.

The potential of documentary moving images to foster democratic exchange has been percolating within media production culture for the last century, and now, with mobile cameras at our fingertips and broadcasts circulating through unpredictable social networks, the documentary impulse is coming into its own as a political force of social change. The exploding reach and power of audio and video are multiplying documentary modes of communication. Once considered an outsider media practice, documentary is finding mass appeal in the allure of moving images, collecting participatory audiences that create meaningful challenges to the social order. Documentary is adept at collecting frames of human experience, challenging those insights, and turning these stories into public knowledge that is palpable for audiences. Generating pathways of exchange between unlikely interlocutors, collective identification forged with documentary discourse constitutes a mode of political agency that is directing energy toward acting in the world. Reflecting experiences of life unfolding before the camera, documentary representations help order social relationships that deepen our public connections and generate collective roots. As digital culture creates new pathways through which information can flow, the connections generated from social change documentary constitute an emerging public commons. Considering the deep ideological divisions that are fracturing U.S. democracy, it is of critical significance to understand how communities negotiate power and difference by way of an expanding documentary commons. Investment in the force of documentary resistance helps cultivate an understanding of political life from the margins, where documentary production practices are a form of survival.

This book examines the dialectical role of semantic analysis within metaphysical inquiry. It argues that semantic analysis ought to be modest in its metaphysical pretensions in the sense that linguistic and conceptual analysis should not be expected to yield deep insight into either what exists or the nature of what exists. The argument turns on distinctions among narrowly linguistic semantics in the generative tradition and two varieties of broadly philosophical semantics which correspond to broad approaches to semantically infused metaphysical inquiry. In particular it distinguishes ideational semantics and metaphysical inquiry via the way of ideas, on the one hand, from referential semantics and metaphysical inquiry via the way of reference, on the other. It is argued that foundational assumptions of the generative framework are insufficient on their own to support the drawing of metaphysically immodest conclusions from the narrowly semantic premises. But it is shown that if we are determined to bridge the gap between narrowly semantic premise and metaphysical conclusion, we must augment our semantics with additional metasemantic premises. Such additional premises may come either from ideationalist or referentialist metasemantics. A number of arguments for preferring referential metasemantics over ideational metasemantics are offered. It is argued pursuing referentialist metasemantics as opposed to ideationalist metasemantics yields a semantics that is metaphysically modest. Finally it is argued that metaphysically modest should regarded as a feature rather than a bug of a semantic theory, one that serves to bring semantics into closer alignment with the special sciences generally.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a defining force in the current era, shaping the contours of technology and deeply permeating our everyday lives. From autonomous vehicles to predictive analytics and personalized recommendations, AI continues to revolutionize various facets of human existence, progressively becoming the invisible hand guiding our decisions. Simultaneously, its growing influence necessitates the need for a nuanced understanding of AI, thereby providing the impetus for this book, “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks.” This book aims to equip its readers with a comprehensive understanding of AI and its subsets, machine learning and deep learning, with a particular emphasis on neural networks. It is designed for novices venturing into the field, as well as experienced learners who desire to solidify their knowledge base or delve deeper into advanced topics. In Chapter 1, we provide a thorough introduction to the world of AI, exploring its definition, historical trajectory, and categories. We delve into the applications of AI, and underscore the ethical implications associated with its proliferation. Chapter 2 introduces machine learning, elucidating its types and basic algorithms. We examine the practical applications of machine learning and delve into challenges such as overfitting, underfitting, and model validation. Deep learning and neural networks, an integral part of AI, form the crux of Chapter 3. We provide a lucid introduction to deep learning, describe the structure of neural networks, and explore forward and backward propagation. This chapter also delves into the specifics of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). In Chapter 4, we outline the steps to train neural networks, including data preprocessing, cost functions, gradient descent, and various optimizers. We also delve into regularization techniques and methods for evaluating a neural network model. Chapter 5 focuses on specialized topics in neural networks such as autoencoders, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Long Short-Term Memory Networks (LSTMs), and Neural Architecture Search (NAS). In Chapter 6, we illustrate the practical applications of neural networks, examining their role in computer vision, natural language processing, predictive analytics, autonomous vehicles, and the healthcare industry. Chapter 7 gazes into the future of AI and neural networks. It discusses the current challenges in these fields, emerging trends, and future ethical considerations. It also examines the potential impacts of AI and neural networks on society. Finally, Chapter 8 concludes the book with a recap of key learnings, implications for readers, and resources for further study. This book aims not only to provide a robust theoretical foundation but also to kindle a sense of curiosity and excitement about the endless possibilities AI and neural networks offer. The journ

The stage of the 1700s established a star culture with the emergence of acting celebrities such as David Garrick, Susannah Cibber and Sarah Siddons. It placed Shakespeare at the heart of the classical repertoire and offered unprecedented opportunities to female actors. This book demonstrates how an understanding of the practice and theories circulating at the time can generate new ways of studying and performing plays of all kinds today. Offering theatre professionals a model for active engagement with stage history, this book provides stage historians with an approach to past performance practice that is centred on process and preparation rather than product. Initially, this book vividly introduces readers to the 18th century stage and the ideas that governed it through a study of the vast amount of writing about acting that appeared at the time, including letters, diaries, treatises and anthologies. The author then presents a series of exercises developed in collaboration with professional actors and directors informed by this literature. These exercises can be employed singly or combined into an iterative rehearsal process; they are also open to further adaptation and analysis as part of a work that treats theatre writers of the past as potential collaborators for those interested in theatre today. A truly unique offering, What would Garrick Do? Or, Acting Lessons from the Eighteenth Century offers a fascinating deep-dive into this important time in theatre history to illuminate practices and processes today.

Dramatic climate changes have occurred in the Baltic Sea region caused by changes in orbital movement in the earth–sun system and the melting of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. Added to these longer-term changes, changes have occurred at all timescales, caused mainly by variations in large-scale atmospheric pressure systems due to competition between the meandering midlatitude low-pressure systems and high-pressure systems. Here we follow the development of climate science of the Baltic Sea from when observations began in the 18th century to the early 21st century. The question of why the water level is sinking around the Baltic Sea coasts could not be answered until the ideas of postglacial uplift and the thermal history of the earth were better understood in the 19th century and periodic behavior in climate related time series attracted scientific interest. Herring and sardine fishing successes and failures have led to investigations of fishery and climate change and to the realization that fisheries themselves have strongly negative effects on the marine environment, calling for international assessment efforts. Scientists later introduced the concept of regime shifts when interpreting their data, attributing these to various causes. The increasing amount of anoxic deep water in the Baltic Sea and eutrophication have prompted debate about what is natural and what is anthropogenic, and the scientific outcome of these debates now forms the basis of international management efforts to reduce nutrient leakage from land. The observed increase in atmospheric CO2 and its effects on global warming have focused the climate debate on trends and generated a series of international and regional assessments and research programs that have greatly improved our understanding of climate and environmental changes, bolstering the efforts of earth system science, in which both climate and environmental factors are analyzed together.Major achievements of past centuries have included developing and organizing regular observation and monitoring programs. The free availability of data sets has supported the development of more accurate forcing functions for Baltic Sea models and made it possible to better understand and model the Baltic Sea–North Sea system, including the development of coupled land–sea–atmosphere models. Most indirect and direct observations of the climate find great variability and stochastic behavior, so conclusions based on short time series are problematic, leading to qualifications about periodicity, trends, and regime shifts. Starting in the 1980s, systematic research into climate change has considerably improved our understanding of regional warming and multiple threats to the Baltic Sea. Several aspects of regional climate and environmental changes and how they interact are, however, unknown and merit future research.

Fusing the craft of writing and the philosophy and practice of yoga, The Yogic Writer charts a path to the heart of your creativity through the practice of yogic breathing, somatic exercises and meditations. With the tyranny of outcomes and product paralysing writers in this modern world, Jennifer Sinor summons her 30 years or experience teaching creative writing and yoga to guide your focus back to process, to discover your inner landscape and how writing, when undertaken with intention, transforms our creative potential. A call to sit within the mess and to not have all the answers, this book directs you to seek inspiration from within the body, to recognise it as a vessel, vehicle and teacher that generates knowledge and ideas separate from the cognitive brain. Connecting craft with the body throughout, it maps notions of writing - creating space for ideas and intentions, drafting, revision and sitting in sites of possibility and potential – onto the four stages of breath. Less curriculum and more contemplation through insights offered in brief essays, Sinor meets writers at the point of need, offering practical craft advice whilst meditating on deeper subjects being pursued: how to look, who is really writing, and how to listen to our bodies. With ideas owed to ancient wisdoms, knowledge informing creative writing pedagogy and composition, and Sinor’s own experience, The Yogic Writer offers a unique, alternative approach to finding creativity that forsakes external validation for internal knowledge and experimentation. Inspirational, affirmational and personal, this book is for anyone seeking permission to embody the life of a writer that they already know, deep down, to be theirs.

Paradoxically, no other subjects of modern inquiry are as likely to generate false consolation as the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. Even as we acknowledge the enormity of these twin evils and resolve not to forget or repeat them, we deem them opaque or purely irrational phenomena, thereby minimizing them. We are tempted to relativize the effects of the Shoah and general hatred of the Jews by pointing to the emergence of the state of Israel on earth, or to the redemption of the elect in heaven, as compensation. More dangerously still, we blind ourselves to the objective causes of the pervasive malice by denying that there are objective causes. I argue, in contrast, that every Jew interred in a Nazi death camp was a prisoner of conscience, even as every Jew murdered by the Nazis was a martyr. It was Jewish conscience and Jewish faith themselves that the Nazis loathed and wished to eliminate by degrading and finally destroying the Jewish people. The pantheistic naturalism at the core of National Socialism—a.k.a. survival of the fittest—inevitably conflicted with Jewish moral monotheism. To this day, the erotic mind does not relish being dependent upon and decentered by God’s righteousness. If we insist the Holocaust was pure insanity without any objective basis, we fail to appreciate its radical evil. If we blind ourselves to how Christian supersessionism made the genocide possible (if not inevitable), we make the Shoah more likely to be repeated. This is not to blame the victims but to name the victimizers: our instinctually prideful selves.