On Why Emotional Recalcitrance is Only Apparent

In this thesis I address the topic of emotional recalcitrance, the phenomenon in which one’s emotions are in a state of conflict with one’s judgment. It might be assumed that this conflict indicates that such emotions must be irrational, since they go against our judgment. However, a plurality of voices in the literature have tried to argue that these emotions are not irrational, contrary to appearances. For instance, some emphasise the underlying biological processes of these emotions, leading to views on which recalcitrance is potentially a-rational. Another strategy is to focus on the differences between how judgments and emotions relate to their content, for instance by arguing that emotions are more like perceptions, which are not irrational even when conflicting with judgments. I will argue against both types of responses. On my view, recalcitrant emotions are not irrational because they are not in conflict with the judgments we take them to be in conflict with. That is, subjects misunderstand the content of their own emotion and compare it with the wrong judgments – the emotion, however, is therefore not in any breach of rationality. This assumed conflict is the source of irrationality, rather than the emotion itself. Emotional recalcitrance is, then, the persistence of a misunderstood emotion. I will organise this work as follows. In the first chapter, I will offer a taxonomy of existing theories of emotions and assess their approach to the challenge of recalcitrance. In the second chapter, I will offer a new lens for discussing recalcitrance: a distinction between strong and weak recalcitrance. I will show that my account is the most promising way of accounting for this distinction, while also being consistent with the majority of existing views of emotions. In the final chapter, I address potential issues for my account, particularly issues concerning normative criteria

What Is the Optimal Method for Cleaning Screen-Printed Electrodes?

Screen-printed electrodes-based sensors can be successfully used to determine all kinds of analytes with great precision and specificity. However, obtaining a high-quality sensor can be difficult due to factors such as lack of reproducibility, surface contamination or other manufacturing challenges. An important step in ensuring reproducible results is the cleaning step. The aim of the current work is to help researchers around the world who struggle with finding the most suitable method for cleaning screen-printed electrodes. We evaluated the cleaning efficiency of different chemical compounds and cleaning methods using cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The percentage differences in polarization resistance (Rp) before and after cleaning were as follows: acetone—35.33% for gold and 49.94 for platinum; ethanol—44.50% for gold and 81.68% for platinum; H2O2—47.34% for gold and 92.78% for platinum; electrochemical method—3.70% for gold and 67.96% for platinum. Thus, we concluded that all the evaluated cleaning methods seem to improve the surface of both gold and platinum electrodes; however, the most important reduction in the polarization resistance (Rp) was obtained after treating them with a solution of H2O2 and multiple CV cycles with a low scanning speed (10 mV/s)