Commentary on Jakab's Ineffability of Qualia

Zoltan Jakab has presented an interesting conceptual analysis of the ineffability of qualia in a functionalist and classical cognitivist framework. But he does not want to commit himself to a certain metaphysical thesis on the ontology of consciousness or qualia. We believe that his strategy has yielded a number of highly relevant and interesting insights, but still suffers from some minor inconsistencies and a certain lack of phenomenological and empirical plausibility. This may be due to some background assumptions relating to the theory of mental representation employed. Jakab's starting assumption is that there is no linguistic description of a given experience such that understanding the description would result in someone who has never had the experience being described undergoing an experience of that type. (In terms of the well-known Mary case: No description could reveal what colors are like to Mary.) This is what Jakab means by the ineffability of qualia. And this is Jakab's explanation: Understanding in the standard sense involves our linguistic- conceptual abilities; but our linguistic-conceptual abilities are notinvolved in undergoing simple sensory experiences; so they cannot deliver knowledge by acquaintance, which means linguistic descriptions of sensory experiences cannot result in someone who understands the description undergoing the experience being described. (We do not agree with the assumption that our linguistic-conceptual abilities are not at all involved in undergoing simple sensory experiences; such processes can be involved in undergoing simple sensory experiences, but they need not be the only thinginvolved in undergoing simple sensory experiences; in undergoing simple sensory experiences something else is involved which cannot be captured by descriptions. The crucial point is that descriptions do not give us knowledge by acquaintance.

Blue - A Language for Teaching Object-Oriented Programming

Teaching object-oriented programming has clearly become an important part of computer science education. We agree with many others that the best place to teach it is in the CS1 introductory course. Many problems with this have been reported in the literature. These mainly result from inadequate languages and environments. Blue is a new language and integrated programming environment, currently under development explicitly for object-oriented teaching. We expect clear advantages from the use of Blue for first year teaching compared to using other available languages. This paper describes the design principles on which the language was based and the most important aspects of the language itself

Influence of f(R)f(R) Models on the Existence of Anisotropic Self-Gravitating Systems

This paper aims to explore some realistic configurations of anisotropic spherical structures in the background of metric $f(R)$ gravity, where $R$ is the Ricci scalar. The solutions obtained by Krori and Barua are used to examine the nature of particular compact stars with three different modified gravity models. The behavior of material variables is analyzed through plots and the physical viability of compact stars is investigated through energy conditions. We also discuss the behavior of different forces, equation of state parameter, measure of anisotropy and Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation in the modeling of stellar structures. The comparison from our graphical representations may provide evidences for the realistic and viable $f(R)$ gravity models at both theoretical and astrophysical scale.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures, version accepted for publication in European Physical Journal

A Model for Configuration Management of Open Software Systems

The article proposes a model for the configuration management of open systems. The model aims at validation of configurations against given specifications. An extension of decision graphs is proposed to express specifications. The proposed model can be used by software developers to validate their own configurations across different versions of the components, or to validate configurations that include components by third parties. The model can also be used by end-users to validate compatibility among different configurations of the same application. The proposed model is first discussed in some application scenarios and then formally defined. Moreover, a type discipline is given to formally define validation of a configuration against a system specificationComment: 13 page

Existence of Compact Structures in f(R,T)f(R,T) Gravity

The present paper is devoted to investigate the possible emergence of relativistic compact stellar objects through modified $f(R,T)$ gravity. For anisotropic matter distribution, we used Krori and Barura solutions and two notable and viable $f(R,T)$ gravity formulations. By choosing particular observational data, we determine the values of constant in solutions for three relativistic compact star candidates. We have presented some physical behavior of these relativistic compact stellar objects and some aspects like energy density, radial as well as transverse pressure, their evolution, stability, measure of anisotropy and energy conditions.Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures, version accepted for publication in European Physical Journal