Reasoning with Attitude:Foundations and Applications of Inferential Expressivism

Certain combinations of sounds or signs on paper are meaningful. What makes it the case that, unlike most combinations of sounds answers to these questions are based on the idea that words stand for something, but it is difficult to say what words such as good, if, or probable stand for. This book advances novel answers based on the idea that words get their meaning from the way they are used to express states of mind and what follows from them. It articulates a precise version of this idea, at a time when the shortcomings of the traditional answers are hotly discussed

Takeuti's Well-Ordering Proof: Finitistically Fine?

If it could be shown that one of Gentzen's consistency proofs for pure number theory could be shown to be finitistically acceptable, an important part of Hilbert's program would be vindicated. This paper focuses on whether the transfinite induction on ordinal notations needed for Gentzen's second proof can be finitistically justified. In particular, the focus is on Takeuti's purportedly finitistically acceptable proof of the well-ordering of ordinal notations in Cantor normal form. The paper begins with a historically informed discussion of finitism and its limits, before introducing Gentzen and Takeuti's respective proofs. The rest of the paper is dedicated to investigating the finitistic acceptability of Takeuti's proof, including a small but important fix to that proof. That discussion strongly suggests that there is a philosophically interesting finitist standpoint that Takeuti's proof, and therefore Gentzen's proof, conforms to

The PLASMONX Project for advanced beam physics experiments

The Project PLASMONX is well progressing into its design phase and has entered as well its second phase of procurements for main components. The project foresees the installation at LNF of a Ti:Sa laser system (peak power > 170 TW), synchronized to the high brightness electron beam produced by the SPARC photo-injector. The advancement of the procurement of such a laser system is reported, as well as the construction plans of a new building at LNF to host a dedicated laboratory for high intensity photon beam experiments (High Intensity Laser Laboratory). Several experiments are foreseen using this complex facility, mainly in the high gradient plasma acceleration field and in the field of mono- chromatic ultra-fast X-ray pulse generation via Thomson back-scattering. Detailed numerical simulations have been carried out to study the generation of tightly focused electron bunches to collide with laser pulses in the Thomson source: results on the emitted spectra of X-rays are presented

The instrumented magnets for the OPERA experiment: construction and commissioning

The design and construction of the 990-ton gapless iron magnets for the OPERA experiment represent a major challenge from the point of view of mechanics, electric and heat engineering. Two of such magnets have been built in a deep underground hall of the Gran Sasso laboratories between 2003 and 2006 and they have been switched on for the first time in March 2006. In this paper we discuss the construction and characterization of these devices. First experience with the CNGS beam are also reported. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Takeuti's Well-Ordering Proof: Finitistically Fine?

If it could be shown that one of Gentzen's consistency proofs for pure number theory could be shown to be finitistically acceptable, an important part of Hilbert's program would be vindicated. This paper focuses on whether the transfinite induction on ordinal notations needed for Gentzen's second proof can be finitistically justified. In particular, the focus is on Takeuti's purportedly finitistically acceptable proof of the well-ordering of ordinal notations in Cantor normal form. The paper begins with a historically informed discussion of finitism and its limits, before introducing Gentzen and Takeuti's respective proofs. The rest of the paper is dedicated to investigating the finitistic acceptability of Takeuti's proof, including a small but important fix to that proof. That discussion strongly suggests that there is a philosophically interesting finitist standpoint that Takeuti's proof, and therefore Gentzen's proof, conforms to

First events from the CNGS neutrino beam detected in the OPERA experiment

The OPERA neutrino detector at the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory (LNGS) was designed to perform the first detection of neutrino oscillations in appearance mode, through the study of nu_mu to nu_tau oscillations. The apparatus consists of a lead/emulsion-film target complemented by electronic detectors. It is placed in the high-energy, long-baseline CERN to LNGS beam (CNGS) 730 km away from the neutrino source. In August 2006 a first run with CNGS neutrinos was successfully conducted. A first sample of neutrino events was collected, statistically consistent with the integrated beam intensity. After a brief description of the beam and of the various sub-detectors, we report on the achievement of this milestone, presenting the first data and some analysis results.Comment: Submitted to the New Journal of Physic