• Health Policy and Management
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.31-56
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• 2000

A purpose of this study is to study on Rene Descartes's mind-body theory in medical aspect. Though Rene Descartes was not so much a doctor as a philosopher, he had health and medical science at heart. When he came into the world in 1596, he was in poor health. Therefore, he suffered from his bad health. Descartes's ideas absolutely colored Western thought for three hundred years, especially, his mind-body theory, mechanistic life-view, and reductionism had important effect on medical study and science of public health. As a rule, we know that his mind-body theory was applicable to mind-body dualism, and his mind-body dualism was connected with biomedical model of medicine. But by this study, his mind-body theory was not only mind-body dualism but also mind-body monoism. And he asserted mind-body interaction too. In other words, he advocated mind-body dualism in scientific aspect, but he knew mind-body monoism from his experence. He confessed this fact to Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, he wrote mind-body interaction in $\boxDr$Discours de la methode$\boxUl$, $\boxDr$Meditationes de prima philosophia$\boxUl$, and $\boxDr$Traite des passions de 1'ame$\boxUl$ etc. However, only mind-body dualism of his mind-body theories was written in our medical text book, morever mental realm was excluded from the persuit of learning Descartes advocated a mechanistic world-view and mechanistic life-view, he regarded human body as a machine part. And a paticent corresponds to a troubled machine, a doctor deserves a repairman. But this point of view made holistic understanding of man impossible. Descartes divide the whole into basic building blocks, we named the approach Reductionism. Reductionism led to ontological concept in medical science, bacteriology established 'specific cause-specific disease-specific therapy'. We examined medical influence of Descartes's thought, we need to draw out a philosophic basis of medical science and science of public health by a close study of his records.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.5
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• pp.583-594
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• 2018

A theoretical formulation based on the linearized potential theory, the Descartes' rule and the extremum optimization method is presented to calculate the critical distance of lifting points of the fully balanced hoist vertical ship lift, and to study pitching stability of the ship lift. The overturning torque of the ship chamber is proposed based on the Housner theory. A seven-free-degree dynamic model of the ship lift based on the Lagrange equation of the second kind is then established, including the ship chamber, the wire rope, the gravity counterweights and the liquid in the ship chamber. Subsequently, an eigenvalue equation is obtained with the coefficient matrix of the dynamic equations, and a key coefficient is analyzed by innovative use of the minimum optimization method for a stability criterion. Also, an extensive influence of the structural parameters contains the gravity counterweight wire rope stiffness, synchronous shaft stiffness, lifting height and hoists radius on the critical distance of lifting points is numerically analyzed. With the Runge-Kutta method, the four primary dynamical responses of the ship lift are investigated to demonstrate the accuracy/reliability of the result from the theoretical formulation. It is revealed that the critical distance of lifting points decreases with increasing the synchronous shaft stiffness, while increases with rising the other three structural parameters. Moreover, the theoretical formulation is more applicable than the previous criterions to design the layout of the fully balanced hoist vertical ship lift for the ensuring of the stability.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.144
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• pp.51-82
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• 2017

In Meditation II, Descartes questions "sed quid igitur sum" ("But what then am I?"). To this question to rule our essence, A. Clark insists that "We are soft selves". The idea by Clark is a spontaneous conclusion of the extended mind theory stating that cognitive process, cognitive state, and self may be extended over biological organisms. However, it seems that it is difficult for the extended self to have the qualifications as a moral agent. There have been disputes about expandability of cognitive process and cognitive state, but there have not been many disputes about the possibility of accountability of behavior by the extended self. First of all, in this thesis, it will be revealed that the extended self through the analysis of metaphorical theories and the ontological essence of agent and behavior by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson is just metaphorical rhetoric, which is not suitable for rational comprehension of ontological essence of agent and behavior. Moreover, the analysis of problem about artificial moral agent (AMA) proposes the "Strong First-person Viewpoint" as a requirement of the agent. Finally, the concept of extended self will be shown to be unsuitable for theoretical explanation of us, and the concept of human person will be proposed as an alternative solution.