The freedom of intentional action and the concept of responsibility

If there are any persistent problems of philosophy and I think It would have to be agreed that there are, then, the problem of deciding whether or not man has free-will must be one of them. Indeed, in the history of philosophy so many attempts have been made to show either that he has or that he has not got a free-will that one can easily enough understand the reluctance of some philosophers to deal with the problem at all. In spite of this, however, I intend to make one more contribution towards resolving this ancient and honorable problem. More specifically, I plan to defend the position that man does have free-will; and I interpret this plan in such a way that it commits me to defending the non-causal freedom of intentions and the decisions from which they often emerge. On the other hand, I shall be willing to agree that the relationship between an intention and an action is a causal one. But since I consider the essential element in any defence of the non-causal freedom of intentional action to be demonstration of the uncaused nature of the decision and the corresponding intention that lie behind the action, my task can equally well be interpreted as that of defending the non-causal freedom of Intentional action. And that is the principal way in which I shall interpret it. It must not be forgotten, however, that the attempt to establish man's free-will has seldom been Interpreted purely as an exercise in the subtleties of philosophical dialectic. On the contrary, the practical bearing of the problem is, as far as we are concerned, only too obvious; for, we shall argue, if the agent's actions are causally determined, it becomes impossible to make sense out of his consciousness of moral obligation. But this would entail the impossibility of making sense out of the notion of the agent as a responsible person which in our view is the basic use of the notion of responsibility. We shall, therefore, with the practical bearing of our problem still in mind, begin by expatiating on the notion of responsibility with special emphasis on what we take to be the basic use of the notion. And from there we shall argue back to our interpretation of the non-causal freedom of intentional action that renders this basic use of the notion of responsibility coherent. Incidentally, it will be noted that if we argue in this way the title of this essay will not be entirely appropriate. More specifically we should have entitled it The Concept of Responsibility and the Freedom of Intentional Action if the title was to reflect the order of the argument. The purely administrative problems that such a change of title would have involved, however, were sufficient to render it practically impossible. Thus, bureaucracy triumphs once more over dialectic. Unfortunately, as a modern day St. Paul might put it, the former provides no surer guarantee of salvation then the latter

Gypidula petoskeyensis, sp. nov., A New Brachiopod from the Traverse Group of Michigan

101-104http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/48198/2/ID037.pd

Resistance to the antimicrobial agent fosmidomycin and an FR900098 prodrug through mutations in the deoxyxylulose phosphate reductoisomerase gene (dxr)

There is a pressing need for new antimicrobial therapies to combat globally important drug-resistant human pathogens, including Plasmodium falciparum malarial parasites, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and Gram-negative bacteria, including Escherichia coli. These organisms all possess the essential methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway of isoprenoid biosynthesis, which is not found in humans. The first dedicated enzyme of the MEP pathway, 1-deoxy-d-xylulose 5-phosphate reductoisomerase (Dxr), is inhibited by the phosphonic acid antibiotic fosmidomycin and its analogs, including the N-acetyl analog FR900098 and the phosphoryl analog fosfoxacin. In order to identify mutations in dxr that confer resistance to these drugs, a library of E. coli dxr mutants was screened at lethal fosmidomycin doses. The most resistant allele (with the S222T mutation) alters the fosmidomycin-binding site of Dxr. The expression of this resistant allele increases bacterial resistance to fosmidomycin and other fosmidomycin analogs by 10-fold. These observations confirm that the primary cellular target of fosmidomycin is Dxr. Furthermore, cell lines expressing Dxr-S222T will be a powerful tool to confirm the mechanisms of action of future fosmidomycin analogs

Tests of Lorentz violation in muon antineutrino to electron antineutrino oscillations

A recently developed Standard-Model Extension (SME) formalism for neutrino oscillations that includes Lorentz and CPT violation is used to analyze the sidereal time variation of the neutrino event excess measured by the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) experiment. The LSND experiment, performed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, observed an excess, consistent with neutrino oscillations, of ${\bar\nu}_e$ in a beam of ${\bar\nu}_\mu$. It is determined that the LSND oscillation signal is consistent with no sidereal variation. However, there are several combinations of SME coefficients that describe the LSND data; both with and without sidereal variations. The scale of Lorentz and CPT violation extracted from the LSND data is of order $10^{-19}$ GeV for the SME coefficients $a_L$ and $E \times c_L$. This solution for Lorentz and CPT violating neutrino oscillations may be tested by other short baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, such as the MiniBooNE experiment.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, uses revtex4 replaced with version to be published in Physical Review D, 11 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, uses revtex

Search for π0→νμνˉμ\pi^0 \to \nu_{\mu}\bar\nu_{\mu} Decay in LSND

We observe a net beam-excess of $8.7 \pm 6.3$ (stat) $\pm 2.4$ (syst) events, above 160 MeV, resulting from the charged-current reaction of $\nu_{\mu}$ and/or $\bar\nu_{\mu}$ on C and H in the LSND detector. No beam related muon background is expected in this energy regime. Within an analysis framework of $\pi^0 \to \nu_{\mu}\bar\nu_{\mu}$, we set a direct upper limit for this branching ratio of $\Gamma(\pi^0 \to \nu_\mu \bar\nu_\mu) / \Gamma(\pi^0 \to all) < 1.6 \times 10^{-6}$ at 90% confidence level.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The OscSNS White Paper

There exists a need to address and resolve the growing evidence for short-baseline neutrino oscillations and the possible existence of sterile neutrinos. Such non-standard particles require a mass of $\sim 1$ eV/c$^2$, far above the mass scale associated with active neutrinos, and were first invoked to explain the LSND $\bar \nu_\mu \rightarrow \bar \nu_e$ appearance signal. More recently, the MiniBooNE experiment has reported a $2.8 \sigma$ excess of events in antineutrino mode consistent with neutrino oscillations and with the LSND antineutrino appearance signal. MiniBooNE also observed a $3.4 \sigma$ excess of events in their neutrino mode data. Lower than expected neutrino-induced event rates using calibrated radioactive sources and nuclear reactors can also be explained by the existence of sterile neutrinos. Fits to the world's neutrino and antineutrino data are consistent with sterile neutrinos at this $\sim 1$ eV/c$^2$ mass scale, although there is some tension between measurements from disappearance and appearance experiments. In addition to resolving this potential major extension of the Standard Model, the existence of sterile neutrinos will impact design and planning for all future neutrino experiments. It should be an extremely high priority to conclusively establish if such unexpected light sterile neutrinos exist. The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, built to usher in a new era in neutron research, provides a unique opportunity for US science to perform a definitive world-class search for sterile neutrinos.Comment: This white paper is submitted as part of the SNOWMASS planning proces