1,597 research outputs found
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The case for epistocratic republicanism
In recent years, the fortunes of democracy have waned both in theory and practice. This has added impetus not only to the republican case for strengthening democratic institutions but also to new anti-democratic thought. This article examines the claim made by Jason Brennan that epistocracy, rule by the ‘knowledgeable’, is compatible with freedom from domination. It begins by briefly explaining epistocracy and republicanism. It then presents the argument for epistocratic republicanism: that democracy can be a source of domination and that freedom from domination can be secured through non-democratic political institutions. The case against epistocratic republicanism is grounded in concerns about systemic domination and the ability of epistocrats to arbitrarily set the terms of social cooperation. These two arguments are judged on the basis of which better minimises domination while respecting its value to all people. Epistocratic republicanism is found to be less reliable because of the risks of epistemic injustice that accompanies systemic domination; democracy, accompanied by other republican institutions, is better at minimising domination and respecting persons. It concludes that republicans ought to be democrats
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Illegal immigration as resistance to global poverty
This article defends illegal immigration from the Global South to the Global North, while being agnostic about the right of the state to control borders. This argument is based on two premises: A) cosmopolitan accounts of global distributive justice and b) the human right to resistance. Given that global poverty is an avoidable and intransigent violation of human rights, resistance is justifiable. Illegal immigration is a form of "infrapolitical" resistance that is comparable to fugitive slaves. Like these slave, people living in extreme poverty experience a durable form of domination in which escape is possible, even though it is highly risky. If one thinks that slave did nothing wrong, then one cannot condemn the illegal immigrant
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Justice in assistance: A critique of the Singer Solution
This article begins with an examination of Peter Singer's solution to global poverty as a way to develop a theory of justice in assistance. It argues that Singer's work, while compelling, does not seriously engage with the institutions necessary to relieve global poverty. In order to realise our obligations it is necessary to employ secondary agents, such as non-governmental organisations, that produce complex social relationships with the global poor. We should be concerned that the affluent and their secondary agents are complicit with unjust institutions or can be the source of injustice. What is needed is a theory of justice in assistance. This is a distinct area of justice theory because these agents are not primary agents, like states, but they often provide the basic social goods that we associate with primary agents. The article ends by putting forward a provisional conception of justice in assistance based on the republican idea of non-domination
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Is There a Human Right to Resistance?
This article is premised on the idea that global poverty is the foreseeable
and avoidable by-product of the international system. This position is held
by many cosmopolitans, but rarely do they deal with the consequences of
this claim. This paper will examine the idea of a right to resistance in the face of global poverty. It will argue that a right to resistance is a necessary component of the political conception of human rights. It will also be argued that it is latent in some major documents and declarations to the point that it can be considered an emerging practice
Accurate exchange-correlation energies for the warm dense electron gas
Density matrix quantum Monte Carlo (DMQMC) is used to sample exact-on-average
-body density matrices for uniform electron gas systems of up to 10
matrix elements via a stochastic solution of the Bloch equation. The results of
these calculations resolve a current debate over the accuracy of the data used
to parametrize finite-temperature density functionals. Exchange-correlation
energies calculated using the real-space restricted path-integral formalism and
the -space configuration path-integral formalism disagree by up to
\% at certain reduced temperatures and densities . Our calculations confirm the accuracy of the configuration
path-integral Monte Carlo results available at high density and bridge the gap
to lower densities, providing trustworthy data in the regime typical of
planetary interiors and solids subject to laser irradiation. We demonstrate
that DMQMC can calculate free energies directly and present exact free energies
for and .Comment: Accepted version: added free energy data and restructured text. Now
includes supplementary materia
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Sometimes the most powerful act of resistance is to do nothing
Resistance is a human right. This is why the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that people will be ‘compelled to have recourse, in the last resort, to rebellion’ if human rights are not respected, and why the defence of human rights framed in many United Nations resolutions supports resistance against colonialism and apartheid. It could not be otherwise. If your rights are violated, you must have a recourse. Normally this would be found in the law and the courts but, when faced with severe and intransigent injustice, resistance is that recourse. But when others are resisting, and we are sympathetic to their aims, what should we do? The answer is surprising
An excited-state approach within full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo.
We present a new approach to calculate excited states with the full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) method. The approach uses a Gram-Schmidt procedure, instantaneously applied to the stochastically evolving distributions of walkers, to orthogonalize higher energy states against lower energy ones. It can thus be used to study several of the lowest-energy states of a system within the same symmetry. This additional step is particularly simple and computationally inexpensive, requiring only a small change to the underlying FCIQMC algorithm. No trial wave functions or partitioning of the space is needed. The approach should allow excited states to be studied for systems similar to those accessible to the ground-state method due to a comparable computational cost. As a first application, we consider the carbon dimer in basis sets up to quadruple-zeta quality and compare to existing results where available.N.S.B. gratefully
acknowledges Trinity College, Cambridge for funding.
G.H.B. gratefully acknowledges the Royal Society
for funding via a university research fellowship. This
work has been supported by the EPSRC under grant no.
EP/J003867/1.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jcp/143/13/10.1063/1.4932595
Open-source development experiences in scientific software: the HANDE quantum Monte Carlo project
The HANDE quantum Monte Carlo project offers accessible stochastic algorithms
for general use for scientists in the field of quantum chemistry. HANDE is an
ambitious and general high-performance code developed by a
geographically-dispersed team with a variety of backgrounds in computational
science. In the course of preparing a public, open-source release, we have
taken this opportunity to step back and look at what we have done and what we
hope to do in the future. We pay particular attention to development processes,
the approach taken to train students joining the project, and how a flat
hierarchical structure aids communicationComment: 6 pages. Submission to WSSSPE
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