Eudaimonistic Argumentation

Virtue theories have lately enjoyed a modest vogue in the study of argumentation, echoing the success of more far-reaching programmes in ethics and epistemology. Virtue theories of argumentation (VTA) comprise several conceptually distinct projects, including the provision of normative foundations for argument evaluation and a renewed focus on the character of good arguers. Perhaps the boldest of these is the pursuit of the fully satisfying argument, the argument that contributes to human flourishing. This project has an independently developed epistemic analogue: eudaimonistic virtue epistemology. Both projects stress the importance of widening the range of cognitive goals beyond, respectively, cogency and knowledge; both projects emphasize social factors, the right sort of community being indispensable for the cultivation of the intellectual virtues necessary to each project. This paper proposes a unification of the two projects by arguing that the intellectual good life sought by eudaimonistic virtue epistemologists is best realized through the articulation of an account of argumentation that contributes to human flourishing

The Invisible Thin Red Line

The aim of this paper is to argue that the adoption of an unrestricted principle of bivalence is compatible with a metaphysics that (i) denies that the future is real, (ii) adopts nomological indeterminism, and (iii) exploits a branching structure to provide a semantics for future contingent claims. To this end, we elaborate what we call Flow Fragmentalism, a view inspired by Kit Fine (2005)’s non-standard tense realism, according to which reality is divided up into maximally coherent collections of tensed facts. In this way, we show how to reconcile a genuinely A-theoretic branching-time model with the idea that there is a branch corresponding to the thin red line, that is, the branch that will turn out to be the actual future history of the world

Extended Knowledge-How

According to reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how :147–190, 2008; Philos Phenomenol Res 78:439–467, 2009) knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. To the extent that this is right, then insofar as we might conceive of ways knowledge could be extended with reference to active externalist :7–19, 1998; Clark in Supersizing the mind: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension: embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008) approaches in the philosophy of mind, we should expect no interesting difference between the two. However, insofar as anti-intellectualist approaches to knowledge-how are a viable option, there is an overlooked issue of how knowledge-how might be extended, via active externalism, in ways very differently from knowledge-that. This paper explores this overlooked space, and in doing so, illustrates how a novel form of extended knowledge-how emerges from a pairing of active externalism in the philosophy of mind with anti-intellectualism in the theory of knowledge. Crucial to our argument will be a new way of thinking about the extended mind thesis, as it pertains to the kinds of state one is in when one knows how to do something, and how this state connects with non-accidentally successful performanc

Fiducial Stellar Population Sequences for the VJKs Photometric System

We have obtained broad-band near-infrared photometry for seven Galactic star clusters (M92, M15, M13, M5, NGC1851, M71 and NGC6791) using the WIRCam wide-field imager on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, supplemented by images of NGC1851 taken with HAWK-I on the VLT. In addition, 2MASS observations of the [Fe/H] ~ 0.0 open cluster M67 were added to the cluster database. From the resultant (V-J)-V and (V-Ks)-V colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), fiducial sequences spanning the range in metallicity, -2.4 < [Fe/H] < +0.3, have been defined which extend (for most clusters) from the tip of the red-giant branch (RGB) to ~ 2.5 magnitudes below the main-sequence turnoff. These fiducials provide a valuable set of empirical isochrones for the interpretation of stellar population data in the 2MASS system. We also compare our newly derived CMDs to Victoria isochrones that have been transformed to the observed plane using recent empirical and theoretical colour-Teff relations. The models are able to reproduce the entire CMDs of clusters more metal rich than [Fe/H] ~ -1.4 quite well, on the assumption of the same reddenings and distance moduli that yield good fits of the same isochrones to Johnson-Cousins BV(RI)C photometry. However, the predicted giant branches become systematically redder than the observed RGBs as the cluster metallicity decreases. Possible explanations for these discrepancies are discussed.Comment: 18 pages, 20 figures, Accepted for publication in A

The macroscopic pancake bounce

We demonstrate that the so-called pancake bounce of millimetric water droplets on surfaces patterned with hydrophobic posts [Nat. Phys. 10, 515 (2014)] can be reproduced on larger scales. In our experiment, a bed of nails plays the role of the structured surface and a water balloon models the water droplet. The macroscopic version largely reproduces the features of the microscopic experiment, including the Weber number dependence and the reduced contact time for pancake bouncing. The scalability of the experiment confirms the mechanisms of pancake bouncing, and allows us to measure the force exerted on the surface during the bounce. The experiment is simple and inexpensive and is an example where front-line research is accessible to student projects.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure

Teamwork and Adherence to Guideline on Newborn Resuscitation-Video Review of Neonatal Interdisciplinary Teams

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the importance of non-technical skills for the adherence to guidelines, when teams of midwives, obstetricians, anesthesiologists, and pediatricians resuscitate and support the transition of newborns. Non-technical skills are competences underpinning successful teamwork in healthcare. These are usually referred to as leadership, situational awareness, communication, teamwork, decision making, and coping with stress and fatigue. OBJECTIVE: By review of videos of teams managing newborns with difficult transition, we aimed to investigate whether the level of the teams' non-technical skills was associated with the degree of adherence to guidelines for newborn resuscitation and transitional support at birth. METHODS: Four expert raters independently assessed 43 real-life videos of teams managing newborns with transitional difficulties, two assessed the non-technical score and two assessed the clinical performance. Exposure was the non-technical score, obtained by the Global Assessment Of Team Performance checklist (GAOTP). GAOTP was rated on a Likert Scale 1–5 (1 = poor, 3 = average and 5 = excellent). The outcome was the clinical performance score of the team assessed according to adherence of the European Resuscitation Counsel (ERC) guideline for neonatal resuscitation and transitional support. The ERC guideline was adapted into the checklist TeamOBS-Newborn to facilitate a structured and simple performance assessment (low score 0–60, average 60–84, high 85–100). Interrater agreement was analyzed by intraclass correlation (ICC), Bland-Altman analysis, and Cohen's kappa weighted. The risk of high and low clinical performance was analyzed on the logit scale to meet the assumptions of normality and constant standard deviation. RESULTS: Teams with an excellent non-technical score had a relative risk 5.5 [95% confidence interval (CI) 2.4–22.5] of high clinical performance score compared to teams with average non-technical score. In addition, we found a dose response like association. The specific non-technical skills associated with the highest degree of adherence to guidelines were leadership and teamwork, coping with stress and fatigue, and communication with parents. Inter-rater agreement was high; raters assessing non-technical skills had an interclass coefficient (ICC) 0.88 (95% CI 0.79–0.94); the neonatologists assessing clinical performance had an ICC of 0.81 (95% CI 0.66–0.89). CONCLUSION: Teams with an excellent non-technical score had five times the chance of high clinical performance compared to teams with average non-technical skills. High performance teams were characterized by good leadership and teamwork, coping with stress, and fatigue and communication with parents

Detection of solar-like oscillations in relics of the Milky Way: asteroseismology of K giants in M4 using data from the NASA K2 mission

Asteroseismic constraints on K giants make it possible to infer radii, masses and ages of tens of thousands of field stars. Tests against independent estimates of these properties are however scarce, especially in the metal-poor regime. Here, we report the detection of solar-like oscillations in 8 stars belonging to the red-giant branch and red-horizontal branch of the globular cluster M4. The detections were made in photometric observations from the K2 Mission during its Campaign 2. Making use of independent constraints on the distance, we estimate masses of the 8 stars by utilising different combinations of seismic and non-seismic inputs. When introducing a correction to the Delta nu scaling relation as suggested by stellar models, for RGB stars we find excellent agreement with the expected masses from isochrone fitting, and with a distance modulus derived using independent methods. The offset with respect to independent masses is lower, or comparable with, the uncertainties on the average RGB mass (4-10%, depending on the combination of constraints used). Our results lend confidence to asteroseismic masses in the metal poor regime. We note that a larger sample will be needed to allow more stringent tests to be made of systematic uncertainties in all the observables (both seismic and non-seismic), and to explore the properties of RHB stars, and of different populations in the cluster.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Early Results from APOKASC

Asteroseismology and spectroscopy provide complementary constraints on the fundamental and chemical properties of stars. I describe the first results from APOKASC, a collaboration between the Kepler asteroseismic science consortium (KASC) and the SDSS-III APOGEE survey. These include (1) the first test of asteroseismic scaling relationships in the metal-poor regime using halo and thick disk stars identified in the APOKASC sample; and (2) the calibration of spectroscopic parameters using precise asteroseismic measurements of surface gravity. I also highlight future research avenues that are made possible by this unique sample of thousands of well-characterized red giant stars.Comment: Proc. of the workshop "Asteroseismology of stellar populations in the Milky Way" (Sesto, 22-26 July 2013), Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, (eds. A. Miglio, L. Girardi, P. Eggenberger, J. Montalban

Evaluational adjectives

This paper demarcates a theoretically interesting class of "evaluational adjectives." This class includes predicates expressing various kinds of normative and epistemic evaluation, such as predicates of personal taste, aesthetic adjectives, moral adjectives, and epistemic adjectives, among others. Evaluational adjectives are distinguished, empirically, in exhibiting phenomena such as discourse-oriented use, felicitous embedding under the attitude verb `find', and sorites-susceptibility in the comparative form. A unified degree-based semantics is developed: What distinguishes evaluational adjectives, semantically, is that they denote context-dependent measure functions ("evaluational perspectives")—context-dependent mappings to degrees of taste, beauty, probability, etc., depending on the adjective. This perspective-sensitivity characterizing the class of evaluational adjectives cannot be assimilated to vagueness, sensitivity to an experiencer argument, or multidimensionality; and it cannot be demarcated in terms of pretheoretic notions of subjectivity, common in the literature. I propose that certain diagnostics for "subjective" expressions be analyzed instead in terms of a precisely specified kind of discourse-oriented use of context-sensitive language. I close by applying the account to `find x PRED' ascriptions