You woke up in the light but before the sun.
Breakfast and the paper are done and you are thinking on a nap. Earlier this
morning you remembered what you had forgotten yesterday, the connection built
in -- or, how pets sometimes turn out to look like their masters. Unconscious
replications almost invisible that allow people to be chameleon-like, to adapt
in physical ways, and you wonder of this is true in the realm of
heartansoulanmind.
0844 hours. I have on an old thin-striped short sleeve shirt and I
am reminded of the clothing seen on those once incarcerated in Dachau and
Auschwitz. This then reflects on the Nuremberg rallies.
** **
The Nuremberg Rally
(officially Reichsparteitag, meaning Reich
party convention) was the annual rally of the Nazi Party in Germany, held from
1923 to 1938. They were large Nazi propaganda events, especially after Hitler's
rise to power in 1933. These events were held at the Nazi party rally grounds
in Nuremberg from 1933 to 1938 and are usually referred to in English as the Nuremberg
Rallies. Many films were made to commemorate them, the most famous of which
is Triumph of the Will.
Edited from Wikipedia
** **
** **
Will (philosophy)
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Will, in philosophy, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute
of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are
called “willing” or “voluntary” and sometimes pejoratively “willful” or “at will”.
In general, "will" does not refer to one particular or most preferred
desire but rather to the general capacity to have such desires and act
decisively based on them, according to whatever criteria the willing agent
applies. The will is in turn important within philosophy because a person's
will is one of the most distinct parts of their mind, along with reason and
understanding. It is one of the things, which makes a person who they are, and
it is especially important in ethics, because it is the part, which determines
whether people act, at least when they act deliberately.
One of the repeating
questions discussed in the Western philosophical tradition since
Christianization is the question of "free will", and the related but
more general notion of fate, which asks how will can be truly free if the
actions of people have natural or divine causes which determine them, but which
are not really under the control of people. The question is directly connected
to discussions of what Freedom is, and also the "problem of evil",
because it brings into question whether people really cause their own acts.
Classical philosophy
The classical
treatment of the ethical importance of will is to be found in the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, Books III
and Book VII. These discussions have been a major influence in the
development of ethical and legal thinking in western civilization.
In Book III Aristotle
divided actions into three categories instead of two:
•
Voluntary (ekousion)
acts.
•
•
Involuntary or
unwilling (akousion) acts, which are in the simplest case where people
do not praise or blame. In such cases a person does not choose the wrong thing,
for example if the wind carries a person off, or if a person has a wrong
understanding of the particular facts of a situation. Note that ignorance of
what aims are good and bad, such as people of bad character always have, is not
something people typically excuse as ignorance in this sense. "Acting on
account of ignorance seems different from acting while being ignorant".
•
•
"Non-voluntary"
or "non willing" actions (ouk ekousion) which are bad actions
done by choice, or more generally (as in the case of animals and children when
desire or spirit causes an action) whenever "the source of the moving of
the parts that are instrumental in such actions is in oneself" and
anything "up to oneself either to do or not". However, these actions
are not taken because they are preferred in their own right, but rather because
all options available are worse.
•
It is concerning this
third class of actions that there is doubt about whether they should be praised
or blamed or condoned in different cases.
Virtue and vice
according to Aristotle are "up to us". This means that although no
one is willingly unhappy, vice by definition always involves actions, which
were decided upon willingly. Vice comes from bad habits and aiming at the wrong
things, not deliberately aiming to be unhappy. The vices then, are voluntary
just as the virtues are. He states that people would have to be unconscious not
to realize the importance of allowing themselves, to live badly, and he
dismisses any idea that different people have different innate visions of what
is good.
In Book VII, Aristotle
discusses self-mastery, or the difference between what people decide to do, and
what they actually do. For Aristotle, akrasia,
"unrestraint", is distinct from animal-like behavior because it is
specific to humans and involves conscious rational thinking about what to do,
even though the conclusions of this thinking are not put into practice. When
someone behaves in a purely animal-like way, then for better or worse they are
not acting based upon any conscious choice.
Aristotle also
addresses a few questions raised earlier, on the basis of what he has
explained:-
•
Not everyone who
stands firm on the basis of a rational and even correct decision has
self-mastery. Stubborn people are actually more like a person without
self-mastery, because they are partly led by the pleasure coming from victory.
•
•
Not everyone who fails
to stand firm on the basis of his best deliberations has a true lack of self
mastery. As an example he gives the case of Neoptolemus (in Sophocles' Philoctetes) refusing to lie despite
being part of a plan he agreed with.
•
•
A person with
practical wisdom (phronesis) can not
have akrasia. Instead it might sometimes seem so, because mere
cleverness can sometimes recite words which might make them sound wise, like an
actor or a drunk person reciting poetry. A person lacking self-mastery can have
knowledge, but not an active knowledge that they are paying attention to. For
example when someone is in a state such as being drunk or enraged, people may
have knowledge, and even show that they have that knowledge, like an actor, but
not be using it.
Medieval European philosophy
Inspired by Islamic
philosophers Avicenna and Averroes, Aristotelian philosophy became part of a
standard approach to all legal and ethical discussion in Europe by the time of
Thomas Aquinas. His philosophy can be seen as a synthesis of Aristotle and
early Christian doctrine as formulated by Boethius and Augustine of Hippo,
although sources such as Maimonides and Plato and the aforementioned Muslim
scholars are also cited.
With the use of
Scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas's Summa
Theologica makes a structured treatment of the concept of will. A very
simple representation of this treatment may look like this:
•
Does the will desire
nothing? (No.)
•
Does it desire all
things of necessity, whatever it desires? (No.)
•
Is it a higher power
than the intellect? (No.)
•
Does the will move the
intellect? (Yes.)
•
Is the will divided
into irascible and concupiscible? (No.)
This is related to the
following points on free will:
•
Does man have
free-will? (Yes.)
•
What is free-will—a
power, an act, or a habit? (A power.)
•
If it is a power, is
it appetitive or cognitive? (Appetitive.)
•
If it is appetitive,
is it the same power as the will, or distinct? (The same, with
contingencies).
Early modern philosophy
The use of English in
philosophical publications began in the early modern period, and therefore the
English word "will" became a term used in philosophical discussion.
During this same period, Scholasticism, which had largely been a Latin language
movement, was heavily criticized. Both Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes
described the human intellect or understanding as something which needed to be
considered limited, and needing the help of a methodical and skeptical approach
to learning about nature. Bacon emphasized the importance analyzing experience
in an organized way, for example experimentation, while Descartes, seeing the
success of Galileo in using mathematics in physics, emphasized the role of
methodical reasoning as in mathematics and geometry. Descartes specifically
said that error comes about because the will is not limited to judging things
which the understanding is limited to, and described the possibility of such
judging or choosing things ignorantly, without understanding them, as free
will.
Under the influence of
Bacon and Descartes, Thomas Hobbes made one of the first attempts to systematically
analyze ethical and political matters in a modern way. He defined will in his Leviathan Chapter VI, in words which
explicitly criticize the medieval scholastic definitions:
In deliberation, the
last appetite, or aversion, immediately adhering to the action, or to the
omission thereof, is that we call the will; the act, not the faculty, of
willing. And beasts that have deliberation, must necessarily also have will.
The definition of the will, given commonly by the Schools, that it is a rational
appetite, is not good. For if it were, then could there be no voluntary act
against reason. For a voluntary act is that, which proceedeth from the will,
and no other. But if instead of a rational appetite, we shall say an appetite
resulting from a precedent deliberation, then the definition is the same that I
have given here. Will therefore is the last appetite in deliberating. And
though we say in common discourse, a man had a will once to do a thing that
nevertheless he forbore to do; yet that is properly but an inclination, which
makes no action voluntary; because the action depends not of it, but of the
last inclination, or appetite. For if the intervenient appetites, make any
action voluntary; then by the same reason all intervenient aversions, should make
the same action involuntary; and so one and the same action, should be both
voluntary and involuntary.
By this it is
manifest, that not only actions that have their beginning from covetousness,
ambition, lust, or other appetites to the thing propounded; but also those that
have their beginning from aversion, or fear of those consequences that follow
the omission, are voluntary actions.
Concerning "free
will", most early modern philosophers, including Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke
and Hume believed that the term was frequently used in a wrong or illogical
sense, and that the philosophical problems concerning any difference between
"will" and "free will" are due to verbal confusion (because
all will is free):
a FREEMAN, is he,
that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not
hindered to do what he has a will to. But when the words free, and liberty,
are applied to any thing but bodies, they are abused; for that which is not
subject to motion, is not subject to impediment: and therefore, when it is
said, for example, the way is free, no liberty of the way is signified, but of
those that walk in it without stop. And when we say a gift is free, there is
not meant any liberty of the gift, but of the giver, that was not bound by any
law or covenant to give it. So when we speak freely, it is not the
liberty of voice, or pronunciation, but of the man, whom no law hath obliged to
speak otherwise than he did. Lastly, from the use of the word free-will,
no liberty can be inferred of the will, desire, or inclination, but the liberty
of the man; which consisteth in this, that he finds no stop, in doing what he
has the will, desire, or inclination to do.."
Spinoza argues that
seemingly "free" actions aren't actually free, or that the entire
concept is a chimera because "internal" beliefs are necessarily
caused by earlier external events. The appearance of the internal is a mistake
rooted in ignorance of causes, not in an actual volition, and therefore the
will is always determined. Spinoza also rejects teleology, and suggests that
the causal nature along with an originary orientation of the universe is
everything we encounter.
Some generations
later, David Hume made a very similar point to Hobbes in other words:
But to proceed in this
reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the
most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science; it will
not require many words to prove, that all mankind have ever agreed in the
doctrine of liberty as well as in that of necessity, and that the whole
dispute, in this respect also, has been hitherto merely verbal. For what is
meant by liberty, when applied to voluntary actions? We cannot surely mean that
actions have so little connexion with motives, inclinations, and circumstances,
that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other,
and that one affords no inference by which we can conclude the existence of the
other. For these are plain and acknowledged matters of fact. By liberty, then,
we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the
determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we
may; if we choose to move, we also may. Now this hypothetical liberty is
universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains.
Here, then, is no subject of dispute.
Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau added
a new type of will to those discussed by philosophers, which he called the
"General will" (volonté générale). This concept developed from
Rousseau's considerations on the social contract theory of Hobbes, and
describes the shared will of a whole citizenry, whose agreement is understood
to exist in discussions about the legitimacy of governments and laws.
Kant
Kant's Transcendental
Idealism claimed that "all objects are mere appearances [phenomena]."
He asserted that "nothing whatsoever can ever be said about the thing in
itself that may be the basis of these appearances." Kant's critics
responded by saying that Kant had no right, therefore, to assume the existence
of a thing in itself.
Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer disagreed
with Kant's critics and stated that it is absurd to assume that phenomena have
no basis. Schopenhauer proposed that we cannot know the thing in itself as
though it is a cause of phenomena. Instead, he said that we can know it by
knowing our own body, which is the only thing that we can know at the same time
as both a phenomenon and a thing in itself.
When we become
conscious of ourself, we realize that our essential qualities are endless
urging, craving, striving, wanting, and desiring. These are characteristics of
that which we call our will. Schopenhauer affirmed that we can legitimately
think that all other phenomena are also essentially and basically will. According
to him, will "is the innermost essence, the kernel, of every particular
thing and also of the whole. It appears in every blindly acting force of
nature, and also in the deliberate conduct of man…." Schopenhauer said
that his predecessors mistakenly thought that the will depends on knowledge.
According to him, though, the will is primary and uses knowledge in order to
find an object that will satisfy its craving. That which, in us, we call will
is Kant's "thing in itself", according to Schopenhauer.
Arthur Schopenhauer
put the puzzle of free will and moral responsibility in these terms:
Everyone believes
himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions,
and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life. ... But
a posteriori, through experience, he
finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that
in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct,
and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the
very character which he himself condemns...
In his On the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer
stated, "You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life
you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that
one thing."
Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzche was influenced by Schopenhauer when younger, but later felt him to be
wrong. However, he maintained a modified focus upon will, making the term
"will to power" famous as an explanation of human aims and actions.
Idealism: Will as all
In idealistic models
of reality, the material world is either non-existent or is a secondary
artifact of the "true" world of ideas. In such worlds, it can be said
that everything is an act of will. Even if you are arrested by the
police, this is actually an act of your will, too; if you didn't want it to
happen, you could have decided otherwise. This line of thought is seen among
proponents of a spiritual or mystical universe such as Carlos Castaneda, the
New Thought writers Frank Channing Haddock (The Power of Will) and
William Walker Atkinson (Personal Power Volume V: Will Power).
The concept of Will is
especially important to certain Hermetic and esoteric traditions, particularly
in and those mystical practices associated with European ideology. Perhaps most
notably, the concept takes on an essential role as the philosophical-spiritual
basis of Thelema (and its various delineations), an occultic system of thought
developed by the writer-mystic Aleister Crowley: Crowley argued that Will
provides for a certain ground of being, as well as the possibility that rituals
such as ceremonial magic, yoga, and meditation allow for conscious beings to
have direct influence over reality and both the spiritual and metaphysical
world. Important to Thelema (the term itself meaning "will") is the
notion of a difference between mundane "will" and True Will, the
latter of which is the purposed fulfillment of human beings through a process
of [largely esoteric] methods employed to achieve self-realization.
Edited from
Wikipedia - Will (Philosophy)
** **
What
an excellent summary this Wikipedia provides.
Most of this is re-enforcer to what you have
already read at one time or another. Your editing for these notes will retag
unconsciously concealed reminders of what needs to be expressed in Brothers 17.
Study the above closely. - Amorella
0937 hours. This will take more study. I will put this on a
separate document and divide the content into a flow my mind can more easily
render.
1130 hours. The sun is coming out, did some yard chores
and we are readying to go to Pine Hill Lakes Park for a walk, a short walk for
me. I did too much work yesterday, no exercises today. Carol is talking to
Wandy F., at the third house to our north and east. Dennis F. is her husband
and he took over as head of the volunteer Lakeside community government on
which Carol served for several years. Mr. Bob Austermann, our neighbor, next to
the King's next door to the south was head of Lakeside for its first nineteen
years; he is now in his mid-eighties.
You walked a bit, over along the big lake
and you took a couple of photos on your iPhone. Drop these in later and Robert
and Richard can be sitting on a bench in Riverton Lakes Park talking. -
Amorella
I would like that, I would like to be talking to Bob once again
even in memory and invention.
Good. From a Bible in Brothers 16 to
philosophy in Brothers 17, pretty standard fare. - Amorella
Yes, it was. (1224) I'm waiting on Carol to complete her walk.
Earlier I was sitting on a bench talking to one of Tim King's students -- they
are fly fishing in his Words in the Wild (nature/environment writing class).
The fellow is a junior. I told him I used to teach at Mason and Indian Hill and
to say 'hi' to Tim and to Gary (Mr. Popplewell) who is my closest long time
friend in my Mason teaching days (1984 - 2003). Indian Hill was during the 1972
- 1984 school years. Escola Graduada de Sao Paulo took place in 1970 - 1972.
Whitehall-Yearling took place in 1967 - 1969, and Magnetic Springs Junior High
was 1966 - 1967. In the Spring of 1966 I did my student teaching an Olentangy
High School.
You split a full course turkey breast and
black forest ham, nine-grain honey oat foot long Subway sub, a pack of chips
and two cookies. Carol brought her own ice tea and you picked up a large Coke
Zero at the store. You are down at the park along the Little Miami amongst the
leafing trees and green grass.
Looking south from east side Pine Hill Lake
(Mason fly fisherman climbing the bank from Mr. King's
Class)
Looking north from east side Pine Hill Lake
We will encompass these photos in Brothers
17. While you were downloading photos you had some from the Grand Canyon Desert
Rim. There are three in particular that I like. Drop them here. - Amorella
** **
Looking North - Colorado River below
with East Desert Rim midway on the upper right
Looking northeast at the East Desert Rim
Looking east at the East Desert Rim
** **
1440
hours. I am surprised. You usually don't have much to say about such photos
other than: "This is not a travel log."
In
here, these three photos represent the land (if you will) between the Living
and the Dead or as they used to say, between the Quick and the Dead. The
"heart of darkness" (no offense to Joseph Conrad) is an illusion.
This is Merlyn's upcoming point in Brothers 17. Post. - Amorella
1739 hours. I have summarized what may be needed on
"Human Will" for Brothers 17 as well as perhaps later in the GMG
series.
Add here and post. - Amorella
***
HUMAN WILL (PHILOSOPHY) refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts
intentionally performed. [Wikipedia
summarized by rho]
Actions
made according to a person's will are called “willing” or “voluntary” and
sometimes pejoratively “willful” or “at will”.
The will
is in turn important within philosophy because a person's will is one of the
most distinct parts of their mind, along with reason and understanding.
It is
especially important in ethics, because it is the part, which determines
whether people act, at least when they act deliberately.
How can will be truly free if the actions of
people have natural or divine causes which determine them, but which are not
really under the control of people?
It brings
into question whether people really cause their own acts.
Classical philosophy
Aristotle
divided actions into three categories instead of two:
•
Voluntary (ekousion) acts.
•
Involuntary or unwilling (akousion) acts, which are in the simplest case
where people do not praise or blame.
•
"Non-voluntary" or "non willing" actions (ouk ekousion)
which are bad actions done by choice.
Virtue and
vice according to Aristotle are "up to us". This means that although
no one is willingly unhappy, vice by definition always involves actions, which
were decided upon willingly.
Vice comes
from bad habits and aiming at the wrong things, not deliberately aiming to be
unhappy. The vices then, are voluntary just as the virtues are.
Aristotle
discusses self-mastery, or the difference between what people decide to do, and
what they actually do.
A person lacking self-mastery can
have knowledge, but not an active knowledge that they are paying attention to.
People may have knowledge, and even
show that they have that knowledge, like an actor, but not be using it.
Medieval European philosophy
With the
use of Scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica makes a
structured treatment of the concept of will. A very simple representation of
this treatment may look like this:
•
Does the will desire nothing? (No.)
•
Does it desire all things of necessity, whatever it desires? (No.)
•
Is it a higher power than the intellect? (No.)
•
Does the will move the intellect? (Yes.)
•
Is the will divided into irascible and concupiscible? (No.)
This is
related to the following points on free will:
•
Does man have free-will? (Yes.)
•
What is free-will—a power, an act, or a habit? (A power.)
•
If it is a power, is it appetitive or cognitive? (Appetitive.)
•
If it is appetitive, is it the same power as the
will, or distinct? (The same,
with contingencies).
Early modern philosophy
The use of
English in philosophical publications began in the early modern period, and
therefore the English word "will" became a term used in philosophical
discussion. During this same period, Scholasticism, which had largely been a
Latin language movement, was heavily criticized.
In
deliberation, the last appetite, or aversion, immediately adhering to the
action, or to the omission thereof, is that we call the will; the act, not the
faculty, of willing.
Will
therefore is the last appetite in deliberating. And though we say in common
discourse, a man had a will once to do a thing that nevertheless he forbore to
do; yet that is properly but an inclination, which makes no action voluntary;
because the action depends not of it, but of the last inclination, or appetite.
Concerning
"free will", most early modern philosophers, including Hobbes,
Spinoza, Locke and Hume believed that the term was frequently used in a wrong
or illogical sense, and that the philosophical problems concerning any
difference between "will" and "free will" are due to verbal
confusion (because all will is free).
Some
generations later, David Hume made a very similar point to Hobbes in other
words:
But to proceed in this reconciling
project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most
contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science; it will not
require many words to prove, that all mankind have ever agreed in the doctrine
of liberty as well as in that of necessity, and that the whole dispute, in this
respect also, has been hitherto merely verbal. For what is meant by liberty,
when applied to voluntary actions?
By liberty, then, we can only mean
a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will;
that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also
may. Now this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every
one who is not a prisoner and in chains. Here, then, is no subject of dispute.
Rousseau
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau added a new type of will to those discussed by philosophers, which he
called the "General will". This concept developed from Rousseau's
considerations on the social contract theory of Hobbes, and describes the
shared will of a whole citizenry, whose agreement is understood to exist in
discussions about the legitimacy of governments and laws.
Kant
Kant's
Transcendental Idealism claimed, "all objects are mere appearances
[phenomena]." He asserted, "nothing whatsoever can ever be said about
the thing in itself that may be the basis of these appearances." Kant's
critics responded by saying that Kant had no right, therefore, to assume the
existence of a thing in itself.
Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer
proposed that we cannot know the thing in itself as though it is a cause of
phenomena. Instead, he said that we can know it by knowing our own body, which
is the only thing that we can know at the same time as both a phenomenon and a
thing in itself.
When we
become conscious of ourselves, we realize that our essential qualities are
endless urging, craving, striving, wanting, and desiring. These are
characteristics of that which we call our will.
According
to him, though, the will is primary and uses knowledge in order to find an
object that will satisfy its craving. That which, in us, we call will is Kant's
"thing in itself", according to Schopenhauer.
Everyone
believes himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his individual
actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of
life. ... But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his
astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of
all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that
from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very
character which he himself condemns...
In his On
the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer stated, "You can do what you
will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one
definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing."
Nietzsche
Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche maintained a modified focus upon will, making the term
"will to power" famous as an explanation of human aims and actions.
Idealism: Will as all
In
idealistic models of reality, the material world is either non-existent or is a
secondary artifact of the "true" world of ideas. In such worlds, it
can be said that everything is an act of will.
This line
of thought is seen among proponents of a spiritual or mystical universe such as
Carlos Castaneda. [A Separate Reality]
The
concept of Will is especially important to certain Hermetic and esoteric
traditions, particularly in and those mystical practices associated with
European ideology.
Aleister
Crowley (writer-mystic) argued that Will provides for a certain ground of
being, as well as the possibility that rituals such as ceremonial magic, yoga,
and meditation allow for conscious beings to have direct influence over reality
and both the spiritual and metaphysical world.
The notion
of a difference between mundane "will" and True Will, the latter of
which is the purposed fulfillment of human beings through a process of [largely
esoteric] methods employed to achieve self-realization.
Edited & Compressed from Wikipedia
- Will (Philosophy)
***
The last of Alta's Arizona turkey soup for supper and you watched
two "NCIS" shows and one "Castle" from your vacation
DVRing. The windows are open upstairs and you both are ready for another good
night's sleep in comfortable early morning outside temperatures.
2151 hours. I feel ready to begin and perhaps to conclude Brothers
17 tomorrow. What sparks the discussion?
Why the two took the separate tracks they
took professionally, heart surgeon and college professor. Originally both had
planned to make the USAF their careers. The girls were going to join the Peace
Corps. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of JFK changed their
lives. The theme is "how things come about". - Amorella
Why all the background?
Because both loved philosophy in those days
-- avid readers. Both sets of parents pressed them to develop independently so
they might grow to be free financially. You will have to go back to their
sophomore years in college. Freshman year 1960-1961; Sophomore: 1961-1962;
Junior: 1962-1963; Senior: 1963-1964. Those will be the years of focus.
Tomorrow, dude. Post. - Amorella
2212 hours. This seems like far too much to put in 750 words.
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