1,131 research outputs found
(Ad-)ventures in faith: a critique of Bishop's doxastic venture model
While some philosophical models reduce religious faith to either mere belief or affect, more recent accounts have begun to look at the volitional component of faith. In this spirit, John Bishop has defended the notion of faith as a âdoxastic ventureâ. In this article, I consider Bishop's view in detail and attempt to show that his account proves on the one hand too permissive and on the other too restrictive. Thus, although the doxastic-venture model offers certain advantages over other prominent views in the philosophy of religion, it still falls short of providing us with an ultimately satisfactory account of religious faith
Why Jim Joyce Wasnât Wrong: Baseball and the Euthyphro Dilemma
In 2010, pitcher Armando Galarraga was denied a perfect game when umpire Jim Joyce called Jason Donald safe at first with two outs in the bottom of the 9th. In the numerous media discussions that followed, Joyceâs âblownâ call was commonly referred to as âmistakenâ, âwrongâ, or otherwise erroneous. However, this use of language makes some not uncontroversial ontological assumptions. It claims that the fact that a runner is safe or out has nothing to do with the ruling of the umpire himself, but rather with some state of the universe that does not depend on the umpire for its existence (e.g. the runnerâs reaching the base before the ball or not). In this paper, I recast the problem as a version of Platoâs Euthyphro Dilemma and argue that the view implied by the above assertions is actually misguided. Instead, I hope to show that an alternative view â what I call ârestricted umpire voluntarismâ â is actually more in line with the spirit of the game of baseball and is not as counterintuitive as it may appear at first glance
Irrationality and âGutâ Reasoning: Two Kinds of Truthiness
There are at least three basic phenomena that philosophers traditionally classify as paradigm cases of irrationality. In the first two cases, wishful thinking and self-deception, a person wants something to be true and therefore ignores certain relevant facts about the situation, making it appear to herself that it is, in fact, true. The third case, weakness of will, involves a person undertaking a certain action, despite taking herself to have an all-things-considered better reason not to do so.
While I think that Stephen Colbert's notion of "truthiness" might be able to fit the mold of each of these three kinds of irrationality, it applies most directly to cases of wishful thinking and self-deception â and itâs these two types of irrationality that I discuss extensively in this paper. As we will see, there are some troubling philosophical problems that arise regarding phenomena like self-deception. But we can use the concept of truthiness to show how these âparadoxes of irrationalityâ may be resolved without denying the fundamental irrationality of truthiness itself.
An earlier version of this paper ("Truthiness, Self-Deception, and Intuitive Knowledge") appeared in "The Daily Show and Philosophy" (2007)
"Signs for a People Who Reason": Religious Experience and Natural Theology
In this paper, I examine various philosophical approaches to religious experience and natural theology and look at some ways in which the former might be relevant for the latter. I argue that by thinking more about oft-overlooked or -underemphasized understandings of a) what might constitute religious experience and b) what functions natural theology might serve, we can begin to develop a more nuanced approach to natural theological appeals to religious experience â one that makes use of materially mediated religious experience to develop a natural theology more sensitive to the varieties of experience of lived religion âon the groundâpublishe
First measurement of the polarization observable E in the (p)over-right-arrow((gamma)over-right-arrow, pi(+))n reaction up to 2.25 GeV
First results from the longitudinally polarized frozen-spin target (FROST) program are reported. The double-polarization observable E, for the reaction (p) over right arrow((gamma) over right arrow, pi( + ))n, has been measured using a circularly polarized tagged-photon beam, with energies from 0.35 to 2.37 GeV. The final-state pions were detected with the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer in Hall B at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. These polarization data agree fairly well with previous partial-wave analyses at low photon energies. Over much of the covered energy range, however, significant deviations are observed, particularly in the high-energy region where high-L multipoles contribute. The data have been included in new multipole analyses resulting in updated nucleon resonance parameters. We report updated fits from the Bonn-Gatchina, Jfilich-Bonn, and SAID groups. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V
Towards a Resolution of the Proton Form Factor Problem: New Electron and Positron Scattering Data
There is a significant discrepancy between the values of the proton electric form factor, G(E)(p), extracted using unpolarized and polarized electron scattering. Calculations predict that small two-photon exchange (TPE) contributions can significantly affect the extraction of G(E)(p). from the unpolarized electron-proton cross sections. We determined the TPE contribution by measuring the ratio of positron-proton to electron-proton elastic scattering cross sections using a simultaneous, tertiary electron-positron beam incident on a liquid hydrogen target and detecting the scattered particles in the Jefferson Lab CLAS detector. This novel technique allowed us to cover a wide range in virtual photon polarization (epsilon) and momentum transfer (Q(2)) simultaneously, as well as to cancel luminosity-related systematic errors. The cross section ratio increases with decreasing epsilon at Q(2) = 1.45 GeV2. This measurement is consistent with the size of the form factor discrepancy at Q(2) approximate to 1.75 GeV2 and with hadronic calculations including nucleon and Delta intermediate states, which have been shown to resolve the discrepancy up to 2-3 GeV2
Anti-angiogenesis: making the tumor vulnerable to the immune system
Ongoing angiogenesis has been shown to possess immune suppressive activity through several mechanisms. One of these mechanisms is the suppression of adhesion receptors, such as intercellular adhesion molecule-1, vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 and E-selectinâadhesion molecules involved in leukocyte interactionsâon the vascular endothelium. This phenomenon, when happening to the tumor endothelium, supports tumor growth due to escape from immunity. Since angiogenesis has this immune suppressive effect, it has been hypothesized that inhibition of angiogenesis may circumvent this problem. In vitro and in vivo data now show that several angiogenesis inhibitors are able to normalize endothelial adhesion molecule expression in tumor blood vessels, restore leukocyte vessel wall interactions, and enhance the inflammatory infiltrate in tumors. It is suggested that such angiogenesis inhibitors can make tumors more vulnerable for the immune system and may therefore be applied to facilitate immunotherapy approaches for the treatment of cancer
Upper limits for the photoproduction cross section for the phi(--)(1860) pentaquark state off the deuteron
We searched for the phi(--)(1860) pentaquark in the photoproduction process off the deuteron in the Xi(-)pi(-)-decay channel using CLAS. The invariant-mass spectrum of the Xi(-)pi(-) system does not indicate any statistically significant enhancement near the reported mass M = 1.860 GeV. The statistical analysis of the sideband-subtracted mass spectrum yields a 90%-confidence-level upper limit of 0.7 nb for the photoproduction cross section of phi(--)(1860) with a consecutive decay into Xi(-)pi(-) in the photon-energy range 4.5 GeV \u3c E-gamma \u3c 5.5 GeV
A theory of normed simulations
In existing simulation proof techniques, a single step in a lower-level
specification may be simulated by an extended execution fragment in a
higher-level one. As a result, it is cumbersome to mechanize these techniques
using general purpose theorem provers. Moreover, it is undecidable whether a
given relation is a simulation, even if tautology checking is decidable for the
underlying specification logic. This paper introduces various types of normed
simulations. In a normed simulation, each step in a lower-level specification
can be simulated by at most one step in the higher-level one, for any related
pair of states. In earlier work we demonstrated that normed simulations are
quite useful as a vehicle for the formalization of refinement proofs via
theorem provers. Here we show that normed simulations also have pleasant
theoretical properties: (1) under some reasonable assumptions, it is decidable
whether a given relation is a normed forward simulation, provided tautology
checking is decidable for the underlying logic; (2) at the semantic level,
normed forward and backward simulations together form a complete proof method
for establishing behavior inclusion, provided that the higher-level
specification has finite invisible nondeterminism.Comment: 31 pages, 10figure
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